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RHYTHM, MUSIC
AND EDUCATION

EMILE JAQUES-DALCROZE

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
BY HAROLD F. RUBINSTEIN

ILLUSTRATED

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

XTbe ftnicfterbocher press
1921

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HARVARD
[UNIVER'-^lTYl
LIBRARY
JAN 26 t9ib.

FrimUi in th» UniUd States of Amertea

/1^

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To myfriind
Adolpbs Appu

FOREWORD

Twenty-five years ago I made my d^but in pedagogy,
as Professor of Harmony at the Conservatoire of Ge-
neva. After the first few lessons, I noticed that the ears
of my pupils were not able to appreciate the chords
which they had to write, and I concluded that the flaw
in the conventional method of training is that pupils i
are not given experience of chords at the beginning of
their studies— when brain and body are developing
along parallel lines, the one constantly communicating its .
impressions and sensations to the other — ^but that this
experience is withheld until the time arrives to express
the results in writing. Accordingly I decided to pre-
cede my lessons in written harmony by special exercises
of a physiological nature aimed at developing the hear-
ing faculties, and I was not long in discovering that,
while with older students acoustic sensations were hin-
dered by futile intellecttial preconceptions, children ap-
preciated them quite spontaneously, proceeding in due
course quite naturally to their analysis.

I therefore set about training the ears of my pupils
as early as possible, and discovered thereby not only that
the hearing faculties develop with remarkable ease at a \
stage when every new sensation delights the child, and ;
stimulates in him a joyful curiosity, but, in addition,
that once the ear is trained to the natural sequences of
sounds and chords, the mind no longer experiences the

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vi Foreword

slightest difficulty in accustoming itself to the various
processes of reading and writing.

Nevertheless, the musical progress of a certain ntun-
ber of pupils, whose ear developed at normal speed,
appeared to me to be retarded by an incapacity to
estimate with any exactitude variations of time and
rhythmic grouping. The mind perceived the varia-
tions, but the vocal apparatus was imable to give eflFect
to them. I came to the conclusion that the motive
and dynamic element in music depends not only on
the hearing, but also on another sense. This I took at
first to be the sense of touch, seeing that metrical
finger exercises conduce unmistakably to the pupil's
progress. Presently, however, a study of the reactions
produced by piano-playing, in parts of the body other
than the hands— movements with the feet, oscillations
in the trunk and head, a swaying of the whole body,
etc. — ^led me to the discovery that musical sensations
of a rhythmic nature call for the muscular and nervous
response of the whole organism. I set my pupils exer-
cises in stepping and halting, and trained them to react
physically to the perception of musical rhythms. That
was the origin of my "Eurhythmies," and I was
sanguine enough to believe that therewith my experi-
mental labours were at an end, and that I might now
proceed to construct a rational and definite system of
musical education. I was speedily disillusioned! I soon
discovered that, out of ten children, at most two re-
acted in a normal manner; that the motor-tactile con-
sciousness, the combination of the senses of space and
movement, exists in a pure state as rarely as the perfect
sense of hearing that musicians call ''absolute pitch."

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ForewoM vii

I saw the lack of musical rhythm to be the result of a
general "a-rhythm," whose cure appeared to depend on
a^ special training designed to regulate nervous react-
ions and effect a co-ordination of muscles and nerves;
in short, to harmonise mind and body. And so I came
to regard musical perception, which is entirely auditive
as incomplete, and to seek the connection between in-
stincts for pitch and movement, harmonies of tone and
time-periods, time and energy, dynamics and space,
music and character, music and temperament, finally
the art of music and the art of dancing.

The story of my researches, my gropings, and failures,
as of my definite achievements, may be found in the
various chapters of the present volume. In chrono-
logical order, these chapters record my ideas as devel-
oped from 1897 to the present day in lectures and
articles.' The reader will find in the earlier parts of
the book a certain number of contradictions, and, in
the latter, some repetition of views expressed previously
in a different form, but it seems to me that this series
of transformations and developments out of an original
general principle may be of interest to pedagogues and
psychologists; that is why I discarded my original
intention of recasting all the articles according to
a definite plan, and on a principle of unity. It may
perhaps be of advantage to educationalists to have the

> Certain of the last chapters have not previously appeared in print.
The remainder were published (some, in part only) in the Tribune
de Genhoe the Semaine LUUraire the Mercwre de France^ the
Monde Musical^ the Courtier Musical, the Menestrel and the Grande
Review. PinaUy oertain of them have appeared in an abbreviated form,
in reports of pedagogic proceedings, such as that issued by the
Association of Swiss Musicians on the Reform of Teaching in Schools.

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viii Foreword

opportunity of following my progress through all its
stages, of which the few secondary and higher schools
already launched on the voyage have as yet only tra-
versed the first. They will bear in mind that the idea
underljdng the conception and construction of my whole
] system is that the education of to-morrow must, before
all else, teach children to know themselves, to measure
their intellectual and physical capacities by judicious
comparison with the efiorts of their predecessors, and
to submit them to exercises enabling them to utilise
their powers, to attain due balance, and thereby to
adapt themselves to the necessities of their individual
and collective existence.

It is not enough to give children and young people a
general tuition fotmded exclusively on the knowledge
, of our forbears' activities. Teadhers should aim at
I furnishing them with the means both of living their own
, lives, and of harmonising these with the lives of others.
The education of to-morrow must embrace reconstruc-
tion, preparation, and adaptation; aiming, on the one
hand, at the re-education of the nervous faculties and
the attainment of mental calm and concentration and,
on the other, at the equipment for whatever enterprise
practical necessity may dictate, and at the power to re-
act without effort; in short, at the provision of a maxi-
mum force with a minimum of strain and resistance.

More than ever in these times of social reconstruc-
tion, the human race demands the re-education of the
[ individual. There has been endless discussion as to the
inevitable effects on the social and artistic atmosphere
of the future of the present unsettled state, in which it
is impossible to look ahead and prescribe the necessaiy

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Foreword ix

measures for the safeguarding of our civilisation and
our culture. In my judgment, all our efforts should be
directed to training our children to become conscious
of their personalities, to develop their temperaments,
and to liberate their particular rhythms of individual
life from every trammelling influence. More than ever
they should be enlightened as to the rdations existing
between soul and mind, between the conscious and the
sub-conscious, between imagination and the processes,
of action. Thoughts should be brought into immediate
contact with behaviour — the new education aiming at
r^^ulating the interaction between our nervous and /
our intellectual forces. Fresh from the trenches, sol-,
diers should be able to continue the struggle in a new
guise; and in the schools, our teachers, likewise, should
be on the alert to combat weakness of will and lack of
confidence, and to train the fresh generations by every
possible means to fight for self-mastery and the power
to place themselves, fully equipped, at the service of
the htmian race.

In matters of art, I foresee that individual efforts will
continue to attract a certain public, but I believe that
a new demand for collective unity will drive numerous
persons, formerly estranged from art, into association
for the expression of their common spirit. And from
that a new art will emerge, compound of a multitude
of aspirations, of different d^^rees of strength, but
unanimous in the quest of an ideal and common outlet
for emotion. This will lead to the call for a psycho-
physical training based on the cult of natural rhythms,
and which, guided by the collective will — ^working, may-
be, sub-consdously — will fill an increasingly important i

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X Foreword

part in civilised life. In the theatre we shall be shown
dramas, in which the People will play the principal
r61e, emerging as an entity, instead of a mere conglom-
eration of supers. We shall then find that all our cur-
rent ideas on play-produdng have been formed out of
regard for the individual, instead of from a recognition
of the resources of a crowd in action. We shall feel the
need for a new technique in the grouping of crowds —
such as the brilliant efforts of G6mier and Granville
Barker have not completely attained on the stage.
Only an intimate understanding of the synergies and
conflicting forces of our bodies can provide the clue to
this future art of expressing emotion through a crowd;
while music will achieve the miracle of guiding the
latters' movements — grouping, separating, rousing, de-
pressing, in short, "orchestrating" it, according to the
^dictates of natural eurhythmies. The development of
; the emotions will enable it to give collective expression
to them, though at considerable sacrifice to the indi-
; vidual. New forms of music will come to birth, having
the power of animating masses of people, training them
in the many processes of coimterpointing, phrasing, and
shading musical, rhythms with a view to their plastic
expression. All attempts at reviving the dance have
hitherto proved inadequate. A new art of dancing will
accompany the new music, both alike inspired by an
tmderstanding of the innumerable resources of the hu-
man body, allied to the spiritual essence, idealism, and
sense of form that alone can give solidity to any art in-
spired by the imperative djmamic and agogic demands
of the ever fluctuating human temperament.
I leave for treatment in some of the following chap-

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Foreword ^^

ters my observations on the manifold wajrs of corporal
interpretation of the lines of musical sound. My de-
sire, in this foreword, is to record my deep and fervent
conviction that, now the War is over, the coming gen-
eration will experience this need of forming groups for
the expression of common emotion, and that a new art
will be called into being, created spontaneously by all
those who regard music as a magnificent and potent
agent for the inspiration and refinement of himian
gesture — and this latter as a pre-eminently "musical"
emanation of our desires and aspirations.

E. Jaques-Dalcroze.
Gbnbva.

Note. — The authorized school of the method in Amer-
ica is the New York School of Dalcroze Eurythmics,
9 East 59th Street, New York City. There are teachers
in Boston, Chicago, Seattle, and Philadelphia. All in-
quiries about the work in America should be addressed to
the New York school. Eurythmics is now taught in the
New York Institute for the Education of the Blind and
is proving very successful. It has also been applied
to the teaching of music in the public schools of New
York, though in a modified form, and has been taught
in many private schools in the East.

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PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION

The characteristic mtisical tendencies of a race come to
light in rhythm. The union of nations, socially so im-
portant, should be based on the interchange and balance^
of temperaments peculiar to the various races. Music, |
in the Greek sense of the word, is the art in which j
temperament is most concretely manifested. It is thus !
important that each race be given the means, by special
training, of eoctgnalising the rhythm peculiar totjiatrace.
The reduction of racial temperaments to a common levd
wotdd be disastrous for the intellectual progress of hu-
manity. Unfortimately international musical education
attempts to measure the various sensibilities of races by
a common formula, and, for the last two centuries, the
schools have been reducing the rhythmic habits of the
most diverse nations to a common type.

Education, as I understand it, should have as its chief
aim the suppression of resistances of every nature which
hamper the individual in the extemalisation of his char- .
acter , and should, further, enable him in the most natural
manner to give expression to his sensibility and tempera-
ment. Education by means of and in rhythm has noth-
ing to do with metrics, a science of a purely mechanical
nature. Still, rhythmics requires the helpof metrics when
it is a question of creating a style. To my mind rhyth- 1
mic training should vary in its methods according to the
special needs of the country in which it is given, whereas^
training in metrics is of universal application.

xiii

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xiv Preface to the American Edition

In the case of the American people I believe Eu-
rhythmies can have a beneficial influence. I have,
indeed, often been surprised at the lack of knowledge
shown by my American pupils of the qualities of
"time," more particularly of the value of effort sus-
tained for the length of time required for the constunma-
tion of that effort. Intelligence is an important factor
of progress; persistence in the utilisation of the intel-
lectual powers is a still more important factor. The
first consequence of study in Eurhythmies is continuity
of effort, for rhythm is a prime factor of continuity.
Further it is a factor of discipline and I think that the
American child, who so easily takes possession of him-
self, needs an education calculated to give him the
means of perpetuating this *'self ** and of bringing it
into harmony with the society of which he is called to
form a part. It is not enough to be intelligent and an
artist; still more needful is the desire to continue to be
both one and the other; for the progress of a race de-
pends on the persistence of each individual member in
asserting his "self" and in bringing this "self" into
harmony with that of his fellows. I have had oppor-
timities for noting how the American child can vibrate
and enthuse when brought into contact with art and
life. Perhaps my method of training by and in
rhjrthm will help him to advance with more confidence
on the path of spiritual and physical self -conquest, and
to pursue his aesthetic and moral development with
more certain persistence and harmony of effort.

Emile Jaques-Dalcroze,

Gbnbva, November, 1930.

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CONTENTS

CHAPTSR p^Qg

I. — ^The Place of Ear Training in Musical

Education (1898) .... 3

II. — ^An Essay in the Reform of Music

Teaching in Schools (1905) 13

III. — ** The Young Lady of the Conservatoire

AND the Piano " (1905) ... 61

IV. — ^The Initiation into Rhythm (1907) 79

V. — Music and the Child (1912) ... 95

VI. — ^Rhythmic Movement, Solf&ge, and Im-
provisation (1914) . .115

vti. — ^eurhythmics and musical composition

(1915) 145

VIII.— Music, Joy, and the School (1915) . 165

IX. — ^Rhythm and Creative Ibiagination (1916) 183

X. — ^Rhythm and Gesture in Music Drama —

AND Criticism (1910-1916) . . .199

XI. — How TO Revive Dancing (19 12) . 231

XII. — ^EURHYTHMICS AND MOVING PlASTIC (1919) 257

XIII. — Music and the Dancer (1918) . . 289

XIV. — ^Rhythm, Time, and Temperament (1919) 309

Musical Supplement • . . .335

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ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGB

Portrait of E. Jaques-Dalcroze Frontispiece

Two Scenes from "Les Souvenirs/' Geneva, 1918 16

Crescendo of Movement .

Scene from "Les Souvenirs." (i)

Scene from "Les Souvenirs." (2)

Scene from "Les Souvenirs." (3)

A Plastic Exercise, (i)

A Plastic Exercise. (2)

Study in Leaping, (i)

Study in Leaping. (2)

Group Exercises

Scene from Geneva Festival, 1914

32
48
96
128
160
192
224
256
288
304

xvu

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RHYTHM, MUSIC
AND EDUCATION

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CHAPTER I

THE PLACE OF EAR TRAINING IN MUSICAL
EDUCATION (1898)

The absurdity of studying harmony without the previous
acquirement and practice of inner hearing — Necessity of cul-
tivating hearing faculties of harmony students — Character of
exercises designed to educate the ear — Dangers of specialised
studies, particularly in pianoforte, not accompanied by general
studies — The place of motor-tactile faculties in musical edu-
cation— Summary of special exercises for the adjustment and
development of temperament.

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CHAPTER I

THE PLACE OF EAR TRAINING IN MUSICAL
EDUCATION (1898)

One of the favourite precepts of professors of har-
mony is that you must never make use of the piano to
work out or take note of successions of chords. Faith-
ful to tradition, I proceeded to enforce this maxim on
my classes, imtil confronted by a student who naively
protested: "But, please, sir, why mayn't I use the
piano? How am I to hear anything otherwise?" In
that moment Ught descended on me. I saw that any
rule not forged by necessity and from direct observa-
tion of nature, must be arbitrary and false, and that
the prohibition of the use of the piano was meaningless
when addressed to yoimg people lacking the capacity
of inner hearing. The sense of touch may, to a certain
degree, and in particular cases, replace that of hearing,
and I have known composers with incomplete hearing
faculties who have yet contrived to produce interest-
ing work composed, as they say, "at the piano."
Obviously their studies of harmony have involved the
neglect of its supreme law, — ^it being impossible to con-
ceive a true sequence of chords without an inner ear
to realise the soimd in anticipation. One thing or the
other: Those who have no ear must compose at the
piano^ those who have an ear must compose without

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4 Rhythm, Music, and Education

the piano. The teaxiher should, therefore, regard it as
his duty, in imposing on his pupils the learning of har-
monies without recourse to an instrument, to create in
them a sense of musical pitch, and to develop their
feeling for melody, key, and harmony, by means of
special exercises. Do such exercises exist? And, if
they do, are they taught in our mtisic-schools? These
were the questions I put to myself, and sought to answer
by researches in public libraries, and a study of the
prospectuses and time-tables of the colleges of music.
The reply was forced from me — *'No; exercises for the
development of the aural faculties of musicians do not
exist, and no single college of music concerns itself with
the part played by these faculties in musical training T*

Let me make myself quite dear: undoubtedly there
exist niunbers of books in which may be foimd exer-
cises in reading, transposition, notation, and even vo-
cal improvisation. But all these may be achieved
without the aid of the ear: reading and improvisation
through the muscular, transposition and notation
through the visual senses. None of these exercises aim
at training the ear, and yet it is through the latter
alone that tonal effects are registered in our minds. Is
it not folly to teach music without paying the slightest
attention to the diversification, gradation, and combi-
nation, in all their shades, of the gamut of sensations
called into play by the consonance of musical feeling?
How has it been possible to carry on a systematic
study of music, while utterly ignoring the principal
qualification of the musician?

I therefore set about devising exercises to enable
my pupils to recognise the pitch of sounds, estimate

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Ear Training in Musical Education 5

intervals, apprehend harmonies, distingtdsh the differ-
ent notes in chords, follow the contrapuntal effects in
poljrphonic music, distinguish keys, analyse the rela-
tions between hearing and vocal sensations, sensitise
the ear, and — ^by means of a new system of gymnastics
applied to the nervous system — open up between brain,
ear, and larjmx the necessary channels to form of the
entire organism what one might call the tnn^ ear. . . .
And I assiuned, in my innocence, that, having invented
these exercises, notWng remained but to apply them
in special classes. . . .

Alas! the difficulties I had met with in devising my
scheme for the development of the ear were nothing to
those that now faced me in my endeavour to introduce
the system. Let me recall the weighty objections
marshalled against me. The true musician (it was said)
should possess, as it were, instinctively, the necessary
qualifications for the practice of his art, and no amoimt
of study could supply gifts that must come nattu^lly
or not at all: the student's time being strictly limited,
it was undesirable to embarrass him with additional
labours tending to distract his absorption in finger exer-
cises: his instrumental studies were already adequate
to his musical needs, etc. . . . Some of these argu-
ments are soimd enough in their place. It is evident
that a person should not attempt the serious study of
music without particular gifts for the purpose, includ-
ing an aptitude for distinguishing sounds, and, need-
less to say, a certain sensibility of nerves, and elevation
of feeling, without which no musician can pass muster.
Apart from that, however, the fact that instrumental
classes are filled with individuals imable either to hear

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6 Rhythm, Music, and Education

or to listen to music, justifies us in asserting that even
the conservatoires admit that it is possible to learn to
sing and to play the piano without being a bom musi-
cian. Why, then, confine ourselves to training the fingers
of these pupils? Why not try to cultivate their aural
perception?

As regards naturally good musicians who devote
themselves to the study of composition or orchestral
conducting, may one not claim that daily exercises in
distinguishing degrees of intensity and pitch of soimds,
sense-analyses of tones and their combinations, poly-
phonies and harmonies, in every key, might conceiv-
ably render their ear even more sensitive, their mtisical
susceptibilities even more delicate? Apart from that,
I maintain that in the study of harmony proper (even
in classes such as those of the Paris Conservatoire,
where only students possessing absolute pitch are ad-
mitted) sufficient attention is not devoted to the deter-
mination and analysis of the relations undoubtedly
existing between soimd and dynamics, between pitch
and accentuation, between the varying tempi of musi-
cal rhythms, and the choice of harmonies.- The music
courses are too fragmentary and specialised: those re-
lating to the piano are not collated with those in har-
mony, nor harmony with those treating of the history
of mtisic, nor is the history of music duly applied to a
study of the general history of peoples and individuals.
Syllabuses are profuse in their subject matter, but
there is no coherence in the tuition. Each professor is
confined to his own narrow domain, having practically
no contact with those of his colleagues who specialise
in other branches of musical science. And yet, as all

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Ear Training in Musical Education 7

music is grounded in human emotion on the one hand,
in the aesthetic research after combinations of sotmd
on the other, the study of soimd and movement should
be collated and harmonised, and no one branch of
music should be separable from the others.

Style in music varies according to climate and lati-
tude, and, by corollary, according as temperaments are
influenced and modified by social atmosphere and con-
ditions of life. The divergencies of harmony and move-
ment which characterise the music of different peoples
spring, then, from the nervous and muscular state of
their organisms, apart altogether from their divers
hearing faculties. Ought we not therefore to devote
more attention, in teadiing music, to the motor facul-
ties of the pupils, to that ensemble of reactions, imptdses,
pauses, recoils, and movements, whether spontaneous
or deliberate, that constitute temperament? I have
often been struck at observing the difficulty small
children have in following, while marching, a very slow
movement in music, in halting or stepping out suddenly
at command, in relaxing their limbs after an anxious
moment, intaldng their bearings and following each
other's movements on being taught the gestures to
accompany a song. What wonder, considering the
time that must be lost between the volition and the
realisation of their movements, that in practising a
song their little larynxes should be tmskilled, their
vocal chords inflexible and inexact, their breathing ill-
regulated, to say nothing of their attempts to punctu-
ate and measure the time, and to emit each note at
the right moment ! Not only, then, should the ear and
voice of the child receive adequate training, but, va

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8 Rhythm, Music, and Education

addition, every part of his body which contributes to
rhythmic movement, every musctilar and nervous ele-
ment that vibrates, contracts, and relaxes tmder the
pressure of natural impulses. Should it not be possible
to create new reflexes, to undertake a systematic edu-
cation of nerve-centres, to subdue the activities of too
excitable temperaments, to regulate and harmonise
muscular synergies and conflicts, to establish more di-
rect communications between the feeling and imder-
standing, between sensations which inform the mind
and those which re-create sensorial means of expres-
sion ? Every thought is the interpretation of an action.
If, up to the present, muscular movements of hand and
fingers alone have sufficed to create in the spirit a dis-
tinct consciousness of rhythm, what far more intense
impressions might we not convey were we to make use
of the whole organism in producing the effects necessary
for the evocation of the motor-tactile consciousness?
I look forward to a system of musical education in
which the body itself shall play the rdle of intermediary
between sotmds and thought, becoming in time the
direct medium of our feelings — aural sensations being
re-inf orced by all those called into being by the multiple
agents of vibration and resonance lying dormant in our
bodies; the breathing system punctuating the rhythms
of words, muscular dsmamics interpreting those dictated
by musical emotions. The child will thus be taught
at school not only to sing, listen carefully, and keep
time, but also to move and think acctirately and rhythm-
ically. One might conmience by regulating the me-
chanism of walking, and from thence proceed to ally
vocal inovements with the gestiu-es of the whole body.

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Ear Training in Musical Education 9

That would constitute at once instruction in rhythm,
and education by rhythm.

Alas! when I consider the enormous pains I am at to
persuade music teachers of the possibility of contriving
exercises to enable children to listen to soimds before exe-
cuting or writing them, to evoke the thought of a note
before its interpretation, I ask myself whether this
training of nerve-centres will ever enter the realm of
practical politics. People will have nothing to do
with new ideas, so long as the old contribute to their
self-satisfaction, and once they have acquired the habit
of accepting them at their face value. Every step
towards emancipation to which they have condescended
apx)ears to them immutable and definitive, and the
truth of to-morrow is denoimced as a lie to-day. And
yet human thought develops little by little, despite all
resistance; our ideas clarify, our powers of quick decis-
ion strengthen, our means of action increase. Who
knows but that a day will dawn when professors the
world over will recognise the possibility of adding to
the divers modes of stimulating sensibility, by processes
of adaptation, variation, and substitution, and music
teachers will depend less exclusively on analysis, and
more on the awakening of vital emotions and the con-
sciousness of mental states? On that day will emerge
on all sides new methods, based on the cultivation of
combined hearing and tactile sensations, and mine will
be the silent gratification accorded those who, in mo-
ments of oppression, have yet been able to murmur the
t\j&mal:''E pur si miwv^t''

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CHAPTER II

AN ESSAY IN THE REFORM OP MUSIC
TEACHING IN SCHOOLS (1905)

Mustc regarded in the schools of io-day as of minor impor-
tance— CuU of singing in the colleges of music of the i6th and
17th centuries — Objections of reactionaries — Music should
be taught only by musicians — What must be exacted of stu-
dents— Futility of a musical education that does not inculccUe
love of music in children — Necessity of gradually eliminating
those who have no musical gifts, and forming special classes
for children with inaccurate ears and voices or lacking in ade-
quate rhythmic capacity — Syllabus of courses and classifica-
turn of capacity in children — How to develop **relative**
pitch — Keys and scales — Exercises necessary to develop sense
of rhythm — The step and the beat — Musical shading and im-
pravisation.

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CHAPTER II

AN ESSAY IN THE REFORM OP MUSIC TEACHING IN
SCHOOLS (1905)

It is not enough for a select few of the artists and
amateurs of a country to be better instructed than their
predecessors, for the musical standard of that country
to be raised and maintained. If the masses are not
capable of following — even at a distance — ^in the steps
of that select few, an impassable barrier will sooner or
later be erected between the two elements of a people
that in these days must unite if they are to co-exist.
If the intellectual aristocracy alone is equipped for
progress, the ill-trained masses will be imable to follow;
the leaders of the movement — ^finding themselves iso-
lated, and needing the co-operation of the main body —
will be obliged either to turn back and rejoin them, or,
contintiing their solitary course, be lost in obscurity.
I shall be told that it is the fate of reformers to pursue
the path of enlightenment in solitude, and that the
masses always overtake them in the end! . . . The
masses will not overtake them imless given the neces-
sary eqtiipment and unless sufiSciently keen and coura-
geous to traverse, without relaxing, every step of the
course. The educational methods of the last centuries
are certainly not calculated to enable our children to
comprehend and assimilate modem artistic develop-

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14 Rhythm, Music, and Education

ments. Our artists have forged new implements of
creation; these implements must be adjusted to the
hands of amateurs, who must then be trained to handle
them, and finally entrusted with them at an age when
they are most ripe for 'prentice work, when their hands
are flexible and easily adapted to new methods, before
the fire of ambition has been snuflfed out by disappoint-
ment and world-weariness, before they have acquired
the habit of doing things in the old way and are thus
prevented from successfully coping with the new. . . .
Obviously, no evolution, no progress can be accom-
plished without the co-operation of youth. It is in
virgin souls that new ideas take firmest root. "Bend
the green twig as you will," runs an old Persian pro-
verb, ' 'only fire can straighten it out again ; but you want
a mallet to drive a pile." The earlier we instil tastes
and convictions in a man, the more sure we may be of
durability and solidity. We should regard the diild as
the man of to-morrow.

The progress of a people depends on the education
given to its children.

If it is desired that musical taste shall not remain the
prerogative of the cultured few, but shall penetrate the
real heart of the whole people, I repeat that a genuine
musical education — ^like the teaching of science and
morals — should be provided at school.

It is evident that religion has ceased to inspire our
teachers to preserve for musical studies the place they
formerly occupied in the general educational scheme.
Many good people find themselves wondering why the
schools continue to teach singing at all, since no oppor-
tunity is given the children of displaying their attain-

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Music Teaching in Schools is

ments either in the churches, on secular holidays, in
their recreation, or as a rhjrthmic assistant and com-
plement to their courses of gymnastics.

These good people, who point out that the teaching
of music to-day serves neither a practical nor an ethical
aim — ^but ministers merely to the annual delectation of
school inspectors — ^have every excuse for losing interest
in musical studies, and regarding them as of no impor-
tance. But if they would take the trouble to reflect
upon the matter, they would recognise that these
studies could and should be given a very definite, prac-
tical, and ethical aim, and thenceforward they would
do their utmost to encourage and stimulate their
development.

Private music lessons are virtually confined to the
children of well-to-do families, whose parents are actu-
ated generally either by snobbishness or by respect for
tradition. Tlie music master, for whom such lessons
provide a livelihood, can hardly be expected to reject
a pupil who shows no aptitude for the work. For the
same reason, none of our amateur conservatoires will
turn a pupil away, be he deaf or idiot. This has the
deplorable result of investing a multitude of musical
dtmces, steeped in affectation, with a reputation for
talent — ^most people being tmforttmately under the im-
pression, that they have only to take lessons in order
to know something, and that, having "gone in for" a
particular subject, they must necessarily tmderstand it.
And there is the other side of the picture. While the
affluence of some parents enables them to provide a
musical education for children utterly unfitted for it —
to the serious detriment of the art — poverty alone

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i6 Rhythm, Music, and Education

deters other parents, to its even greater detriment, from
making similar provisions for their genuinely talented
children. Making music a compulsory school subject
is the only sure means of mobilising the vital musical
forces of a country. Were it imdertaken in the right
spirit, efficiently organised, and confided to intelligent
and competent teachers, every child would at the end
of two or three years be put to the test: those who
showed talent being enabled to continue their studies
to the point of attaining the maximum development
of their faculties, the remainder, those devoid of all
musical taste, being relieved from the biu-den of lessons
of no value to them, and thereby conferring an almost
equal benefit on the art, in being debarred from med-
dling with it, and clogging its progress by ridiculous pre-
tensions. The Coadi, in La Fontaine's fable, would
probably never have arrived at its destination, had the
pretentious fly been joined by others; a swarm of them,
with their buzzing and erratic aerial manoeuvres, would
have exasperated the coachman and distracted the
horses. . . . Heaven preserve us from our musical
flies!

** Talent," said Montesquieu, "is a gift confided to us
by God in secret, and which we display without knowing
it."

If every child were compelled by law to pass an
examination conducted by artists, and to subject him-
self for a few years to competent control, no single
promising recruit would be allowed to pass into ob-
scurity, neither would the hopelessly immusical evade
detection and its logical consequences.

The classification of capacities and incapacities once

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Two Scenes from Les Souvenirs. Geneva, 191 8

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Music Teaching in Schools 17

established — the former receiving due encouragement,
the latter rendered comparatively innocuous, the teach-
ing of music could obviously be practised on a more
effectual basis. The results would now depend on two
important factors, with which we shall deal presently
at greater length: the method of teaching, and the
choice of teachers. Once our educational authorities
realise their responsibilities and set about providing a
sotmd primary musical grounding for every moderately
gifted child, and a more thorough training for every
exceptionally talented one, not only will they have in-
troduced into school life a new element of vitality,
recreation, joy, and health, not only will they have
recruited to the ranks of art a large nimiber of adepts
whose later co-operation must prove invaluable (asstu*-
ing and strengthening the existing choral societies, and
encouraging the formation of orchestras composed
entirely of local talent), but they will also have assem-
bled for future purposes a host of embryonic teachers,
of proved learning and appreciable talents, and — still
more important — au courant with the latest methods
of instruction.

These advantages should satisfy the most sceptical
as to the desirability of reforming the system of musical
education in vogue to-day, even though our motives
have no longer the religious and traditional character
that actuated our ancestors in the i6th and 17 th cen-
turies, in their zest for musical erudition. In those
days music was studied with a view to adequate par-
ticipation in the musical side of religious ceremonies.
The acquirement of musical taste was accordingly a
result of studies imdertaken for this definite purpose.

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i8 Rhythm, Music, and Education

To-day, when religious ardotir has manifestly ceased to
inspire all but the most primitive vocal eflEorts, it be-
hoves us to enquire whether the retention of any form
of musical tuition in the curriculiun of our schools is
not a mere survival of routine, and, if so, whether it is
not time we replaced this tradition (now that its origi-
nal meaning has disappeared) by a more vital incentive
to progress. , Whether this take the form of a desire to
strengthen musical taste and to prepare for the study
of classical and modem masterpieces, or for hygienic
considerations, is not (for the moment) material. The
essential thing is that we should know exactly why we
are to retain music in our current curriculum. We can
later — assuming we are satisfied as to the public utility
of such retention — proceed to enquire as to whether
this generation is in advance of the preceding ones.
Shotild it appear that absolutely no progress has been
made, it is our business to ascertain the cause of this
status quo, and thence set about devising means for
securing a better record for the coming generation.
The progress of the man is one of the results of his
preoccupations as a child. Sotmd ideas instilled in the
schoolroom are transformed later into deeds, provided
that a cognisance of their means of accomplishment is
accompanied by an estimate of the effort necessary for
the purpose, and by genuine love of the art, in whose
cause the effort is to be made. By this means alone
can we make sure of our country keeping pace with the
times, of otir choral societies facing the futtire instead
of burrowing in the traditions of the past, and of virtu-
osity becoming a mere means of expression, instead of
the whole end of musical training. By this means akme

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Music Teaching in Schools 19

can we tempt beauty to our firesides, and fill the void
caused by the decline of religion. Our professionals,
better supported and understood by amateurs, will no
longer seek conquests in other lands, preferring to re-
main in the coimtry which they best tmderstand, and
of which consequently they can best sing the beauties.
The time will return when the People express in
melody its simple joys and griefs. Children, having
rdeamt to sing in unison the old songs that charmed
their forefathers, will feel inspired to create new ones,
and we shall see the end of that lamentable division of
singing at our music competitions into two parts : — ^folk-
songs and artistic songs.

It goes without sajdng that, if, after due reflection,
the principle of teaching music in schools at all is con-
demned, a consideration of the suggestions that follow
will be so much waste of time. If, on the other hand,
the necessity of music study is granted. . . . But
there! ... At this very moment, as I prepare to
marshal my facts and extract the logical conclusions, a
sense of disquiet steals over me, forcing me to ask
whether it is, after all, worth while to affirm and
reaffirm what is, only to be faced with the imperative
and urgent task, alike of musicians and patriots, of
clamouring in season and out of season for what oughl
to be, demanding as of right, a thorough overhauling of
our educational system and resolved, in its cause, to
devote whatever necessary time . . . but at these
words I seem to see emerging from their tombs the
grinning skulls of myriad reformers of the past.
"The necessary time," repeat their mocking voices out

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20 Rhythm, Music, and Education

of graves where lie buried so many old bodies with
so many young hopes: **Have you any idea, poor
mortal, of the incalculable hours, days, years involved
in your 'necessary time*? The time occupied by
cotmtless authorities in 'giving the matter their atten-
tion,' by committees in discussing it, by fools in failing
to tmderstand it, by fanatics in opposing it, by arrith
istes in making promises, by the same worthies, after
arrival, in forgetting them! Your 'necessary time' will
extend far beyond the remaining years of your life,
and, at your death, be sure all your fine schemes for
reform will be buried with you, as were ours with us!
Cut your coat according to your cloth; nobody will
ever obtain a really radical reform. Limit your de-
mands to a minimimti: possibly this 'minimum' will
be accorded after a long and persistent campaign — ^but
don't make the mistake of asking for too much, or you
will get nothing at all. . . . Only discouragement
and disappointment lie in wait for those who seek the
good of other people at the expense of the smug self-
satisfaction of the Powers That Be. Live happy,
thinking only of yourself, and satisfied with things as
they are, since the rest of the world accepts them!"

But — strange phenomenon — these words, instead of
damping our ardour, only reawaken and renew it! Is
it so certain thet every new idea is received with this
universal indifference? Is not such an idea well within
the realm of practical politics, provided it arrives at
the right moment? And is not this moment, in our
case, actually imminent, now when so many artists,
hitherto isolated, are coming together in response to a
yearning for mutual love and tmderstanding, for esprit

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Music Teaching in Schools 21

de corps, in the common cause of progress and the pur-
suit of beauty? Yes, the hour has struck when, by the
coalescence of individual eflEorts, the ideals of our re-
formers the world over will be attained. And as for
the "necessary time" for their attainment, we will face
it with imabated confidence, marching ever forward
side by side, our eyes fixed on one goal, our hearts beat-
ing with a common fervour.'

The teaching of music in our schools fails to produce
anything like adequate results, because our educational
authorities leave the whole control of the tuition in the
hands of stereotyped inspectors. As these are nomi-
nated by pure routine, and no attention or encourage-
ment is given to the initiative of any oflBcial who may
feel tempted to deviate from the beaten track, the con-
sequence is that no innovation of principle or practice
has found its way into the curricultun from time imme-
morial* The theories of Pestalozzi and Froebel on the
musical training of yoimg children have been adopted
only by private schools. The highly original educa-
tional experiments of Kaubert, about the year 1850,
received absolutely no recognition in high quarters.
The value of Swedish drill was only appreciated after
a campaign extending over 15 years. The brilliant sys-
tem of analysing and explaining musical rhythm and
expression advocated by Mathis Lussy, our compa-
triot, and one of the greatest of modem theorists, has
not, up to the present, attracted the attention of our

* The Board of Education of the Canton of Geneva has jtist introduced
eurhythmies as an experiment in three classes of primary schools, and, as
an optional course, in two classes of the Girls' High SchooL (1919.}

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22 Rhythm, Music, and Education

educational authorities. Not that this is so remarkable,
seeing that, so far as I am aware (I can only pray that
I am not mistaken!) music is absolutely unrepresented
on our pubUc bodies, nor have these latter ever mani-
fested the slightest disposition to confer with profes-
sional musicians. ' I say I can only pray that I am not
mistaken, and that by some chance some stray musician
has not, in this or that canton, been summoned to take
an active or consultative part in the oflBdal school-
board proceedings, for we should have to conclude, from
the actual condition of things, that his influence had
been absolutely nUl It is preferable to believe that the
failure of our public bodies to assure a development of
musical studies compatible with the means and powers
at their disposal, is not deUberate. * * Not deUberate" —
that is to say, the result merely of taking no inter-
est in the question, and of never suspecting its im-
portance.

Music, outside of genuine artistic circles, is held in
very light repute not only by our educational authori-
ties, but even by painters, sculptors, and men of let-
ters; and it is by no means tmusual to find jotunalists,
otherwise full of zeal for the artistic development of
their country, treating music as a negligible quantity,
and greeting musical events, either with the smiling
indtilgence of the condescending patron, or with an
equally insufferable affectation of superiority, explicable
only in the light of their abysmal ignorance of the art.

' The Board of Education for the cantons of Geneva and Vaud have
recently appointed a commission of musicians to reorganise musical
instruction in our schools. On their proceedings depend all our hopes
of a real reform (1919).

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Music Teaching in Schools ^3

One would have thought that this same neglect and
disdain was hardly likely to be met with in France,
where at least a smattering of music forms part of the
indispensable equipment of the litUrateur; but, alas,
this smattering usually remains a smattering. And if ^
to her credit, we can record with envy the introduction
into French schools of the highly interesting collection
of chansons of Maurice Bouchor, we cannot lose sight
of the fact that the system of musical education gen-
erally in vogue with our Gallic neighbours is even more
rudimentary than our own, as witness — ^among other
things — the lamentable decline of part-singing in
France, the shameful dearth of musical societies, the
popularity of the gutter songs of the cafS-chantant, and
the extinction of the oratorio. In German schools the
reign of pedantry is everywhere in full force, and the
suggestive cotmsels of eminent specialists like Karl
Storck have not yet attracted the notice of scholastic
authorities. What is worse, the Froebel schools have
fallen into a state of decay. Only Belgitun and Holland
appear fully to appreciate the importance of a sound
and well-organised pedagogic system.

And yet our coimtry is among those whose scholas-
tic institutions command almost tmiversal admiration,
thanks to their excellent organisation generally, and to
the enterprise and enlightenment of most of our boards
of education. How, then, does it come about that only
the teaching of music — and of artistic matters in gen-
eral— should be neglected and abandoned to routine?
The answer is that our scholastic authorities have no
understanding of music, and no ambition to acquire
one. I shall be told that it is manifestly uimecessary

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^4 Rhythm, Music, and Education

for a geographical expert to be represented on a school
board to sectire an adequate teaching of geography.
Granted; but only because no member of such a board
would be found incapable of realising the value of
geography and the importance of obtaining competent
instructors in the science. For this piupose he only
requires to have received himself a general all-round
education, to have a sound judgment, good hearing, and
... to be able to read. The same applies to other
subjects of special training, such as gymnastics. . . .
There again, it is not necessary to be an expert to re-
cognise its utility and advocate its extension. Indeed,
the arguments in favour of the training and hygiene of
the body are furnished by the body itself. And the
practical means of developing the flexibility, and of
securing the balance, of limbs are easy enough to
grasp; for that, again, it is sufficient to be able to read
intelligently. But music is another matter altogether.
Those who have gone through life with an imtrained
ear cannot be expected to appreciate the necessity of
furnishing others with an ear attimed to fine percep-
tions by the diligent practice of special exercises. Those
who themselves cannot distinguish either melodies or
harmonies are hardly the best advocates of a system
designed to secure these accomplishments for others.
And, while they may accept it out of respect for tra-
dition, they will be unable either to select the best
method for training the ear, and rendering it capable of
analysing the relations and combinations of sounds, or
to appreciate the merits of the experts to whom they
may delegate the responsibility of selecting such a
method. The spirit of music expresses itself in a lan-

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Music Teaching in Schools 25

guage of its own, which otir scholastic authorities are
unable to read. And, unfortunately, they will not allow
others to read for them. And yet with them rests the
exclusive right of nominating teachers and deciding on
methods. . . . That is why music has no share in
the general prosperity of our educational system. That
is why children learn neither to read, phrase, record,
or emit sounds in our schools. That is why our sons
and daughters grow up dimib.

**But look here," protests Mr. So-and-So (a familiar
and ubiqtiitous type), ** there is stirely no need to have
a competent general direction to make the teaching
effective. At that rate, you would want singing lessons
given in our schools by specialists. And yet, as things
are, qtiite ordinary masters produce the happiest
results."

**I am not denying, Mr. So-and-So, that there are
good masters in our schools ; but there are also bad ones,
and this would not be the case — or it would hardly ever
be — if we had a competent and well-informed direction,
and if the training of teachers were more complete
so far as music is concerned. Bad teachers must pro-
duce bad pupils. If you take the average of those who
are successful at examinations, you may be sure that
it is far smaller than it would have been if all the
teachers had been well chosen. And that, bear in mind,
is the principal count in my indictment. I contend
that, on leaving school, the greatest possible nimiber of
pupils should have received a musical education ade-
quate for the artistic requirements of modem life, and
for the application of natural faculties normally and
logically developed. These capable masters you speak

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26 Rhythm, Music, and Education

of — Can't you see what different results they would
obtain if their own education had been properly con-
ducted? I am not here going to analyse their methods
in detail — indeed they vary according to the country —
but I think I may assert, without fear of contradiction,
that one and all are based on theory instead of on sen-
sorial experiment. No art is nearer life itself than
music. No art has developed and is still developing
more rapidly, no art has inspired so many ingenious theo-
rists or so many systems of teaching, — growing ever
more and more simple, — proof positive of their peda-
gogic value! To choose between these systems is
admittedly diflBcult, and we are not reproving the au-
thorities with having chosen wrongly. Our grievance
is that they have neglected to choose at all, that they
have preferred in every case — without a single excep-
tion— to retain the methods of the past. What is the
infallible criterion of the worth of a system of instruc-
tion? Surely the practical results of the system, the
technical accomplishments of the pupils who have fol-
lowed it. Let us for a moment consider those accom-
plishments.

After their fourth or fifth year of musical tuition in
our primary schools, are fifty per cent, of the pupils
capable:

1. Of beating time to a time played rUbato by the

master? ,

2. Of reading at sight accurately and in time either the

first, or second part of a folk-song with words?

3. Of discerning whether a melody simg to them is in

C. F, G, or B flat? Whether it is in 2, 3, or 4 time?
Whether it is in a major or minor key ?

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Music Teaching in Schools ^7

And that, I submit, is not asking much. One would
exact much more of students of a foreign language, who
would be expected, on examination, to read and write
with tolerable accuracy. And remember that I am
referring to only 50 per cent, of the pupils. . . .

After five or six years of study in secondary and
higher grade schools, are the pupils capable :

1. Of achieving what we have asked of the pupils of

primary sdiools?

Are fifty per cent, of them capable:

2. Of writing a simple melody heard for the first time,

and a more diflBcult melody that they know by
heart, but have never seen written?

3. Of recognising whether a piece played to them is a

gavotte, a minuet, a march, or a mazurka?

4. Of improvising four bars in any key?

5. Of appreciating a modulation?

6. Of appreciating at a first hearing a change of time?

7. Of explaining clearly, and illustrating, a single rule

of musical prosody, and of "setting" two lines of
verse?

8. Of quoting and illustrating a single rule of phrasing

or shading?

9. Of quoting the names of three celebrated composers

with their most important works?

10. Of giving a summary statement of the difference
between a ballad, a sonata, and a s)rmphony?

Questions i, 2, and 3 correspond to the sort of tests
one might apply to a sixth-year student of English or
German in writing an English or German phrase to
dictation, or replying in English or German to a ques-
tion put in the same language.

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28 Rhythm, Music, and Education

**But wait a minute," will exclaim our Mr. So-and-So,
* * I don't follow you. Do you really expect school child-
ren to know all those things?"

"Why not, sir?"

**Why not, indeed! Ask a child just leaving school
to beat a rvhato in time, to guess the key in which a
folk-song is written. ... To expect the students
in the higher schools to be able to improvise and
modulate and tmderstand musical prosody and good-
ness knows what not ! The mere idea of bothering these
tmfortunate children, whoVe already more than enough
to do, with the names of the classical composers and
their works!"

"What are they to be taught, then!"

"The notes, rests "

"Rests with a vengeance!"

"The notes, sharps, flats, symbols ... all that
sort of thing: in short, music 1''

"Are not the questions I have suggested putting to
pupils related to music?"

"Yes, but "

"But what?"

"But they are too difficult."

"Not a bit, my dear sir, not in the least. They are
of a most elementary nattire. One and all relate to
solf 6ge, not to harmony, and the last two do not require
any theoretical training at all — any more than a good
Swiss requires to study history for six years to be able
to speak of William Tell, or Winkelried or General
Dufour!"

"Still, our children are not taught that sort of thing."

"Then their education is incomplete."

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Music Teaching in Schools 29

**Do you expect every child in a class to have a good
voice and a good ear?"

"Those who have not should be removed from the
class, as we would exclude a blind man from a musketry
course, or a legless man from gymnastics."

"That's not the same thing."

"It is precisely the same thing, I assure you."

' * But how on earth can you expect children to assimi-
late that store of knowledge on a single hour's lesson a
week?"

"If an hour is not enough, they must be given two,
or any number . . . any nimiber, that is, that may
be required to make the lessons profitable. But don't
be alarmed, Mr. So-and-So, one hour will be quite
sufficient once children are brought up to sing outside
school hours, and music is made to play a part in their
everyday life. One thing or the other: either music
lessons should be organised in such a way as to make
children musical — that is to say, to bring out their tem-
perament and hearing faculties — or they should be ex-
cluded altogether from the school curriculum, and the
task of initiating our youth into the beauties of music
relegated to private institutions. . . . But what's
the matter, Mr. So-and-So? Did I hear you mutter
that a good third of the certified students of our
conservatoires are imable either to improvise or to
modulate? That they would be found incapable of
satisfactorily answering any of the questions I have
enumerated? . . . That, sir, is a serious statement
to make. Would you be prepared to subscribe to it
in the columns of the Journal de GetUve or the Easier
Nachrichtenr

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30 Rhythm, Music, and Education

**I wotild subscribe to it with the deepest regret, but
I would subscribe to it."

"The deuce you would! Well, we shall have to re-
form the system of training in our conservatoires as
well."

It is the deplorable fact, as we have already stated,
that singing and music are regarded at schools as sub-
jects outside the essentials of education. It gratifies a
certain ntunber of parents to be able to say that their
children can sing, and so the schools provide a super-
ficial training calculated to give them the appearance
of having studied music. It never — ^unless by chance —
awakens in their senses and heart a real love for music;
it never makes music live for them. They are trained
merely in its external side, and its emotional and really
educative qualities remain hidden from them. They
are not even taught to listen to music. The only music
they hear is that in which they are set to execute. And
on what principle are they taught the art of singing?
It is a matter simply and solely of imitation. One
wonders when our authorities will abandon this system
of parrot-training; when they will begin to recognise
the importance of making singing lessons an integral
element in the life of the school, permeating with music
every side of its activities; tending to poetise them with
its melodious charms, to vitalise, brace, and strengthen
them with its rhjrthm; when they will initiate pupils,
boys and girls, into the wonders to be attained by an
adequate study of part-singing, creating in them, on
leaving school — ^where they will thereby have become
accustomed to singing with and xmderstanding one

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Music Teaching in Schools 31

another — the desire to join choral societies. By so
doing they will establish a point of contact between the
music lessons of the schools and the ''conservatorial"
studies, where at present these pull in opposite direc-
tions, without the slightest attempt at a rapproche-
ment — though, indeed, as things are, this would be
somewhat in the nature of an alliance between the
blind and the paralysed . . . and in public perform-
ances they will have school choirs accompanied by or-
chestral societies, drawn from the conservatoires, with
a consequent valuable exchange of tastes for these
branches of musical activity.

The rub will come in the selection of teachers. A
wholesale dismissal of the present staffs will have
to be made, to considerable heart-burning, and a
clamotir of protests. But, indeed, the ntunber of
music teachers in primary schools, utterly unfitted for
their work, is simply appalling. All of them have spent
the requisite time at the correct institutions, but how
many have profited by it? In how many cases has
not the final "satisfedt" in the teaching certificate
examinations been accorded a candidate who has estab-
lished his qualifications in every branch except music,
out of reluctance to pluck him on the strength of
deficiency in a mere artistic subject of minor import-
ance! These persons will become proficient teachers
in every domain save that of music; they will train
their pupils admirably in geography, arithmetic, lit-
erature; they will teach them to become good and right-
thinking citizens, but — ^being themselves deficient in
instinct and taste for music — they will fail to awaken

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32 Rhythm, Music and Education

the musical instinct and taste of their pupils. They will
thus be responsible for the suppression of these instincts
and tastes over three or four generations, and for the
lowering of the musical level of an entire district for
an indefinite period, thereby restricting the general de-
velopment of the country as a whole. The influence of
these teachers is so pernicious, from our point of view,
that we cannot allow sentimental considerations in
their favour to stand in the way of the interests of
the musical culture of a whole people. The danger of
retaining as music teachers pedants without either the
ear or the voice for their vocation is so patent that it
seems incredible that, intelligent and enlightened in-
dividuals, as are the majority of administrators, shotild
not long ago have recognised the urgent necessity of
putting matters on an entirely new footing. We shotild
not omit to mention that those among the present
staffs who are really good musicians, with a genuine
love of music and a keen interest in its pursuit (and we
know a number of them) would have nothing to fear
from the revolution we are advocating; it would be a
public loss to deprive them of their posts. Zealous in
their devotion to music, they ask no better than to be
allowed to assimilate new methods, and to be given
the opportunity of completing their training in peda-
gogy. As regards masters whose musical incapacities
would bring them under the ban of the new order, we
can hardly think that they would care to complain.
To give lessons in a subject in which one is neither
learned nor interested must be a severe trial for a man
of any sensitiveness; nothing is more unpleasant than
to know oneself incapable of doing what it is one's

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a;
>
O

o
&!

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Music Teaching in Schools 33

business to teach others to do. For this among many
other reasons, it is of the first importance that the
mtisical education in primary schools — as well as in the
higher schools — should be in the hands of musicians.
On the musical talents of the master depend the whole
progress of the pupils, and, indeed, any interest in their
lessons can only be roused by a corresponding keenness
displayed by the master giving them.

With all due respect to certain theorists to whom the
vibrations produced by the scratching of a pen on
paper are as agreeable to the ear as those produced by
the "sweet sounds of music," the hearing is an import-
ant element in the pleasure to be derived from music,
whether exercised in the analysis or creation of soimds,
or in the appreciation of their harmonic combinations
and melodic successions. We would go so far as to
assert — at the risk of incensing certain critics of our
acquaintance — that it is hardly possible to appreciate,
to judge, or even to hear music without a good ear.
The most desirable method of teaching music is, there-
fore, in our judgment, one which, wlule enabling the
pupil as speedily as possible to appreciate melodies,
rhythms, and harmonies, is most e£5cacious in the
development of the auditive faculties on which musical
taste and judgment tdtimately depend. From this
point of view, collective training in schools offers a
distinct advantage over the conservatoire system.
Practical considerations obliging pupils to dispense with
the aid of instruments, they must fall back on them-
selves, emitting with their voices the soimds they are
required to distinguish; and there is so intimate a con-
nection between the vocal and the aural processes,

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34 Rhythm, Music, and Education

that the development of the one virtually involves the
development of the other. The mechanical production
of sounds on an instnmient does not call for any special
effort on the part of the ear: the latter serves merely
as an agent of control, and indeed, failing it, the agency
of sight or of touch is suflBdent for producing the con-
ventionally rough accuracy. On the other hand, the
efforts necessary to assure the accuracy of vocal sounds
conduce to the steady development of atiral faculties.
In other words, while training with the aid of an instru-
ment may tend to develop the hearing, that based on
singing is calculated to refine the listening capacities.

The choice of a teacher is, then, of the highest im-
portance in the training of the ear. He must neces-
sarily possess normal sense of hearing, be a practical
musician, and understand the laws of vocal emission.
He must be versed in singing and in the principles
that regtdate breathing and artictdation, possessing a
special knowledge of the vocal registers of children.
At the present day no attempt is made to develop
children's voices at school. They are given no training
in pulmonary "gymnastics," and are thereby deprived
of an invaluable hygienic expedient. Their head-notes
go uncultivated, to the irreparable detriment of their
vocal system. A music teacher shotdd know how to
develop every medium of physical expression in his
pupils.

He shotdd be, in addition, and no less indispensably,
an artist of taste and talent, and a man of tact and
authority, fond of children and knowing how to handle
them. **Non est loquendum, sed gubemandum/'* If, as
will be admitted, it is not enough for a teacher of prac-

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Music Teaching in Schools 35

tical subjects, like geography and history, to be well
versed in his facts, in order to obtain satisfactory and
lasting results; if such results in these subjects depend
rather on the material of general interest the master
can extract from them (such as the application of their
moral and social inferences), by how much more should
we insist on other than technical competence, in those
who are to be entrusted with the artistic education of
our children. The music teacher should make it his
first business to create a feeling for beauty in the souls
of his pupils. We are in the habit of discoursing to
children of beauty without explaining what it means.
It is, however, just as dangerous to "err in teaching
beauty as in teaching truth." The master should also
be careftd to reveal to them the existence of a conven-
tional and false conception of art, in order that they
may be on their guard against it. He should be able
to illustrate his precepts with examples from the great
masters, and to demonstrate how and by whom art has
been developed down to the present day, and in what
respects it is capable of further development. He should
arouse in them an enthusiasm for masterpieces, and an
ambition to interpret them according to the intentions
of their creators. The greatest of his attributes should
be the power of suggestion, and, in the words of J. F.
Amid (extracted from a comparison very pertinent to
the matter in hand), '*he should be able to read the
child's soul like a musical score, and, merely by trans-
posing the key, adapt the song without sacrificing any
of its charm."

It will be objected that the handling of questions of
taste, and of aesthetics generally, should be left to the

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36 Rhythm, Music, and Education

experts of higher schools, and that instruction in ele-
mentary schools should be limited to the study of
technique. On the contrary, we assert, after a careful
survey of the whole problem, that it is at the commence-
ment that initiation into the essence of beauty should
be undertaken in conjunction with technical training.
How is one ever to attain technical proficiency without
a love for the object of its application? The aesthetic
sense should be cultivated contemporaneously with the
study of the elementary laws of the art, and, from the
first lessons, the child should be made to realise
that the training is directed as much to the heart as
to the brain, and that he must try to love as well as
to understand.

The only real obstacle in the way of our scheme is
the selection of instructors for the first five or six years
of its application. Later on, the selection will operate
almost mechanically — as we shall see in a minute —
among the more talented members of the '^finishing"
classes, but pending this solution of the problem, resort
will have to be made to the kind offices of "interim"
instructors, on whom will rest the heavy responsibility
of initiating pupils into future duties of so high im-
portance. The whole artistic f utiu-e of the country will
lie in their hands, dependent on their zeal, conscien-
tiousness, and skilfulness. Stationed in the place of
honour, theirs will be the noble mission of arousing a
feeling for beauty in the hearts yof their young com-
patriots, and of providing, for future purposes, a school
of competent instructors, alive to the practical value of
their art, and fired with the ambition to propagate it
and stimulate love for it.

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Music Teaching in Schools 37

If, from the point of view of the artistic development
of the people, the compulsory teaching of music in otu:
schools offers the inmiense advantage of bringing latent
talent to light and of assuring to musical temperaments
the necessary training from childhood upwards, it
would be highly dangerous that this tuition should be
the same for highly gifted, less gifted, and ungifted
children indiscriminately. We must never forget that
we are concerned with the teaching of, not a science,
but an art. '*A child may have a taste for science,"
says La Rochefoucauld, "but not every science will
agree with him." Not every child is bom an artist
and while we may find cases where musical instinct,
dormant or otherwise concealed, is brought to light
by careful handling, most often training will only avail
with children more or less predestined to come under
its influence. As Sancho Panza proclaimed: **He who
hasn't enough has nothing." In proverbial parlance,
the most beautiful girl in the world can only give what
she's got; where there is nothing to give, the Devil
loses his rights; you can't get leaves from a dead tree,
or an omelette without eggs; sauce doesn't make fish;
not every one is fated to go to Corinth ; catch your hare
before you jug it! . . . All of which goes to prove
that no manner of means will succeed in making a
child musical, if he hasn't the germ of music in him from
the first. The moral wotdd seem to be that only the
most gifted children should receive a musical training
at all. But, as our old friend Sancho Panza concludes:
"A single rotten apple will contaminate the whole
basketf td ! ' ' And this proverb, based on the observation

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38 Rhythm, Music, and Education

of a natural phenomenon of universal application, puts
us on the road to an important reform. The complete
lack of aptitude of a few pupils in a class will prejudice
the progress of the class as a whole. We must, therefore,
after a certain period of observation, disqualify from
further musical tuition every pupil who lacks a good
voice, a good ear, and a sense of time and rhythm.

People will stand aghast at the complications this
system of elimination threatens to introduce into the
organisation of lessons, but these are more apparent
than real. There are fortunately very few cases —
at most five per cent. — of complete musical incapa-
city, both auditive and rhythmic,' and, by reason of
their rarity, they are as easy to recognise and classify
as cases of idiocy in general school work, or of crimi-
nality in everyday life. After a year of musical train-
ing (the results of an entrance examination will not be
conclusive, since false voices are curable by practice,
while careful exercises will often rectify inactivity of
the ear and insensibility to time) — after a year, let
us say, of mtisical training, the teacher will have been
able to pick out any members of his class totally incap-
able of following the course, and will transfer them to
special classes. There will always remain the resource,
should they still desire to study music, of following a
course at one or other of the conservatoires ! The first
classification, by the elimination of "incurables," will
enable the class to proceed to its second year's activity
under far more favourable conditions, and will be fol-
lowed by a series of successive classifications, which we
will now proceed summarily to indicate. By this means

*S«e Chapter XIV infra, pp. 309, et seq.

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Music Teaching in Schools 39

the organisation of lessons will be established on a clear
and practicable footing.

Let us assume the whole course to occupy six years.

After the first year a few pupils find themselves, on
examination, withdrawn from the class. The same ex-
amination will establish that the remaining pupils are
gifted in varying degrees in sense of rh5rthm, vocal
accuracy, and hearing capacity. Some will possess all
three qualities, others the first two, others again the
latter two. Those who have a good voice and ear, but
are devoid of instinct for rhythm, will be set a double
cotu'se of a particular rhythmic training, of which we
will treat later on, and which is included in the syllabus
of the first year. While repeating this special course,
they will continue the ordinary studies of the second
year. At the end of this year an examination will
enable a fresh classification to be made, which, after
definitely eliminating untrainable voices, will divide the
remaining pupils into the following categories : —

(a) Pupils recognised from the first as possessing all

three qualities, together with those who at the
first examination, showed signs only of two
qualities, but have acquired the third in the
course of their second year's training.

(b) Pupils with bad voices, but possessing the other

two qualities.

sessing a sense of rhythm and a capacity,
thanks to the flexibility of their vocal apparatus,
of singing accurately in association with a choir
(a fairly common phenomenon).
{d) Pupils with good ears and voices, but lacking in
gense of rhythm,

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40 Rhythm, Music, and Education

This classification will enable the master to divide
the pupils of the third year into two parallel sections :

The first (Section I.) will comprise pupils from classes
(a) and (b). The latter (those with untrainable voices,
but with good ear, and rhythmic sense inherent or
acquired) will take no part in the singing, but will
confine themselves to listening to the singing and
beating time.

Section 11. will consist of members of class (c) who,
in the course of the third year will endeavour to perfect
their hearing faculties, and members of class (d)y who
will continue their training in rhythmic movement.

After the examination at the end of the third year,
a penultimate classification will be made. Those mem-
bers of class (b) who may have acquired during the year
the qualities in which they were previously deficient
will be transferred to Section I. All those who remain
devoid of rhythmic sense will be definitely eliminated.

Section I. will thus comprise all those who possess the
three qualities necessary to make the complete musician,
as well as those with an instinct for rhythm, a good ear,
and a bad voice.

Section II. will be composed of pupils with an instinct
for rhythm, but whose ear, while incapable of analys-
ing chords and appreciating musical nuances, is yet
sufficiently accurate to control the natural precision
of the voice.

These two sections will proceed to train concurrently,
during the following two years of the course, at the
rate of an hour a week. A final classification will take
place at the end of the fifth year, and will yield the
following results;

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Music Teaching in Schools 41

Section I. will be divided into two. Section I. (a) will
consist of members of Section I. who show particular
musical promise. They will be accorded during the
sixth year a more complete training. Section I. (jb)
(consisting of those not transferred to Section I. (a))
and Section II. will continue their previous course.

Finally, at the end of the sixth year of study, the best
pupils in Section I. (a) will be admitted, after an exami-
nation, to a training college course designed for the
training of music masters.

"All that is no doubt very ingeniotis "

"Hullo, Mr. So-and-So, you're back again?"

"All that, I say, my dear sir, looks highly ingenious
on paper, but is, in my opinion, quite impracticable.
(I may tell you that your classifications have made my
head ache.) In the first place, some of the classes will
require to devote two hours a week to this wonderful
coturse of Eurhythmies of which you said you would
treat later on "

"Excuse me, but there would be no question of a
supplementary course for the pupils in question. They
would simply be asked to attend for the second time
the course that first-year pupils would be taking for
the first time."

"Very good, then. All the same, once you've split
up the class into two sections, you'll require an hotur's
lesson for each section, which makes two together, if
I'm not mistaken."

"Your calculation is correct, Mr. So-and-So. I pro-
pose to give the class two hours a week for three years,
and even three hours during the third year, when Section
I, will b§ divided into (a) and (ft). But this will not

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4^ Rhythm, Music, and Education

involve a reduction of hours in other branches, the
lessons being shared by three sections of the same
dass."

"And the cost?"

"The increased cost will not be very great, and will
be largely compensated by the undeniable advantages
of the classification. Incidentally several Swiss schools
already devote two hours a week to music lessons.
These will benefit materially from my method, which
during the first two years will require only one lesson a
week/'*

' * Granted ! I have a more serious objection to raise :
your classification will be very diflficult to work in prac-
tice. How is your jury going to decide that certain
pupils are devoid of aural accuracy?"

* * By perceiving that they are unable to recognise and
reproduce intervals that will be sung to them."

"And inacctiracy of voice?"

"By their singing out of tune."

"And sense of rhythm?"

"By their incapacity to divide time into equal beats
or to accentuate strong beats."

"But you were speaking of relative aural accuracy."

"That is possessed by those who can recognise the
notes of a tune only by comparison with a given note:
while those who can recognise them without reference
to a standard possess 'absolute pitch,' and those who
are able to analyse combinations of sound can claim to
have the completely musical ear. You yourself shall
furnish an example. What is this note?"

> The last few years' experience has convinced me that two hours a
week are absplutely necessary. — ^E. J. D. (19 19.)

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Music Teaching in Schools 43

"Yes, yes, another time! ... So you expect your
examiners to understand these fine shades?''
"They will be professional musicians.'*
"Who will never make a mistake in their diagnoses?"
"Everyone is liable to make a mistake. But be
sure of this : Such mistakes as they may make will not
have anything like such serious consequences as the
mistakes of the present system, in allowing incompe-
tents to clog the progress of classes. Besides, our
examiners will commit errors only of detail, and these
could easily be rectified by the regular teacher; and if
he shotild share in any serious blunder, pupils could
always resort to private tuition."

"Between ourselves (I won't tell anyone), isn't this
classification of pupils into sections of those possessing
the three qualities, those possessing only two and so
on — isn't the whole thing an artistic chinoiserie? Do
you seriously believe it to have any practical, sensible,
useful object?"

"Yes, Mr. So-and-So, a highly practical, sensible,
and useful object. The object of not exacting from
pupils more than they are capable of giving : of carrying
each one as far as he can go; of not discouraging the
less gifted ones by making them associate with those
to whom their labotu^ are child's play: of not exposing
bom musicians to the temptation to slack, by permit-
ting them to compete with their slower-witted compan-
ions. I say again, music is an art rather than a science.
To learn music it is not enough to be clever; it is
necessary in addition to be something of an artist.
To confine school music-teaching to elementary facts
is to bring it down to the level of the mediocre, and to

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44 Rhythm, Music, and Education

impede the free development of the naturally gifted.
If you are going to deny these a more complete train-
ing, you might as well give them none at all, for school-
children— boys especially — have little time for private
art studies. Initiate schools into art, but not spurious
art. Display all its beauties to those whom a judicious
examination has shown to be capable of appreciating
them. As for the others, put them in special classes.
These children of average capacity so segregated will
no long^ have their natural instincts of emulation
damped by the knowledge that, however well they work,
they can never come out on top. They will progress
according to their powers, and will leave school with a
moderate appreciation of music, trained to fill their
place in the art world, as intelligent amateurs and
members of musical societies. As for the talented, they
will push forward, freed from their shackles, and giving
full rein to their natiu^ instincts. Their goal, further
removed and higher, will be more difficult to attain:
that will not deter them, once they are able to spread
their wings. The teacher will lead them to the point
whence they can clearly discern it, and thence, guided
by their instinct, by dint of hard work, sustained by
faith and courage, they will attain it . . » our artists
of to-morrow!"

If you ask a teacher which is the best method of
tuition, he will not reply point blank, * * Mine !" — ^modesty
being one of the pedagogic virtues. But the chances
are that the method he will proceed to recommend will
be really his. You will recognise it, incidentally, by
analogy with the character of its creator. According

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Music Teaching in Schools 45

as he may be a pedant, a hustler, a tool, or a poseur^
the method will be artificial, foolish, hustling, or pe-
dantic. What is more, children exposed to this method,
unless they possess highly individual temperaments, will
turn out pedants, hustlers, fools, or poseurs. As siu^y
as men are descended from apes, so surely children,
trained on obsolete methods, show a tendency to revert
to that status. The true educator's task should be,
while guiding the child's will, to bring his individual
qualities ^o light. It is better to provide him with the
means of choosing between good and evil, beauty and
ugliness, than to show him either only the good and
beautiful or only the bad. His spirit should be kindled
with a faint glow which increases with its own reflection.
In Montaigne's words: "The child's imagination should
be stimulated to a frank ciuiosity as to the things we
wish him to learn, and guided, by judiciously whetting
his appetite for knowledge." The best method of
teaching is that which, from the start, offers the pupil
a problem which neither his memory nor his instinct
for imitation can help him to solve. After a year of
preliminaries, of rhythmic exercises, which at once ap-
pease the child's need for movement and recreation,
and inaugtuate his physical and mental development —
after a course of training for the lips and tongue pro-
vided by the study of vowels and consonants — singing
lessons proper may safely be embarked upon. At this
stage, the commencement of the technical side of the
training, the music master's first care shotdd be to make
the child appreciate the difference between tones and
semitones. So long as he is imable to distinguish
these infallibly, whether in singing or listening, any

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46 Rhythm, Music and Education

attempt at approaching another stage of the course
would be an error analogous to teaching the words of
a language before the letters are known. I venture to
assert that nine tenths of singing and instrumental
masters set their pupils to learn scales before they have
attained anything like proficiency in this elementary
course. Under these conditions, how are children ever
to learn to recognise keys or acquire a sound compre-
hension of music?

Every sound method of teaching music must be
based on the hearing, as much as on the emission, of
sounds. If the hearing faculties of a pupil are weak,
they must be developed before he imdertakes the study
of theory. The noise of a drum calls for neither analy-
sis nor reflection (that is why the drtmi is so essentially
a military instrument). To many children, all sound is
merely a noise, and it would be manifestly absurd to
commence their training with a comparative study of
noises. Only by the application of thought will they
come to recognise the point where sound supersedes
noise. Their thought diould therefore be stimulated
and given a direction: there will be time enough after-
wards to start training their memories. "Memory,"
wrote Diderot, "only preserves traces of sensations and
consequent mental processes that have had the degree
of force to produce vital impressions."

And here we approach the vexed but important
question of absolute pitch, that is, the innate and natu-
ral perception of the place of each soimd in the whole
gamut of soimds, and of the correspondence between
the soimd and conventional word (or letter) by which
it is known. There are children who, as soon as they

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Music Teaching in Schools 47

have leamt the names of the notes, will announce on
hearing a sound: "That's an A, an E, an P sharp."
without requiring any further thought than if they
were to pronounce a tree in spring as being green.
Many pedagogues believe absolute pitch to be innate
and incapable of acquirement by practice. Well and
good; but practice can certainly create * 'relative" pitch.
Once the child is sufficiently advanced to appreciate,
without ever making a mistake (specialists will under-
stand the importance of this "ever") the difference
between the tone and the semitone, it is possible by
comparison and suggestion to establish in his mind an
immediate correspondence between a note and its name.
This training should set in motion a constant associa-
tion of sub-conscious ideas. The means of awakening
and co-ordinating these ideas forms the natural basis
of a sound method of music teaching. Otir space here
being limited, we must refer readers to special works
for further information on this subject. We pause
merely to record our firm conviction, based on consid-
erable experience, that relative pitch is capable of being
developed, by means of training, in everyone possess-
ing a good ear, provided such training be commenced at
an early age and precede the study of an instrument.

Absolute pitch, incidentally, is only indispensable
to a musician who proposes to teach music, and if I
have laboured the need for bringing it out in the child,
it is only because — be it remembered — our training is
designed to prepare the most talented students for the
profession of music teachers.

As soon as pupils can distinguish between tones and
semitones, they can commence the comparative study

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48 Rhythm, Music, and Education

of scales, that is, the successions of tones and semitones
which give the character of a key. In this connection,
we venture to mention a little plan we ourselves have
adopted, as a result of considerable professional ex-
perience. Each scale being formed from the same suc-
cession of tones and semitones, in unvarying order,
the pupil will only be able to distinguish one from an-
other from the position of its tonic. The inter-relations
of scales will escape him, since, to his ear, the scale of
A flat, for example, would be merely the melody of the
scale of C transposed to a minor sixth higher, or a major
third lower. But if you make him trace the succession
of notes of the scale of A flat commencing from C, the
tonic of the scale of C (namely: C, D flat, E flat, P, G,
A flat, B flat, C), the pupil will see at once that the mel-
ody differs from that of the scale of C. He will notice
that the tones and semitones are not in the same posi-
tions, and (being familiar with the order of tones and
semitones in a scale extending from tonic to tonic)
will be able, by remarking the places they occupy in
the scale in question, to find the tonic for the scale, and
so identify the key. By this means a pupil may learn
in a year to distinguish any key. The choice of C as
the initial note enables any voice to sing all the scales,
identifying them from the variations involved in the
order of succession of tones and semitones. In other
systems this would be impracticable with children
whose voices have not a large compass, or beginners
restricted to a small register. Indeed, apart from the
compass of the voice, the old systems depend on tedious
effects of transposition, and, if they allow the singing
of certain scales at their true pitch, they neglect to

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o
u

C
O

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Music Teaching in Schools 49

inculcate the inter-relations of the scales which is
practicable only by our method of varying the succes-
sion of notes between the tonics of C.

Another advantage of our system is that, before long,
it so impresses the C on the memory, that a student
is enabled to sing to pitch, without resorting to the
ttming-fork. It is invaluable from the point of view of
mtisic-hearing. The pupil trained by our method has
no difficulty in discerning the key of any piece, thanks
to the perception of the alterations eflEected in the tonic
scale of C, and, accustomed to sing any interval in any
setting (that is in any key), he will be able to recognise
any note irrespective of the instrument that produces it.

It is, therefore, of the highest importance that the
teacher should engrave the f tmdamental C on the memo-
ries— in the very gullets, we might say — of his pupils. '
He should also, in furtherance of his main object, im-
pose, as a set-off to exercises of intonation, what one
might c^ exercises of recognition or appellation, just
as in the primary school reading and writing are taught
simultaneously. On leaving the solf6ge course, the
student should be able to name the notes in an exercise
sung by another, as well as to sing them himself. To
achieve this result, the master should accustom him
from the first to identify the key in which another stu-
dent is singing a stock exercise; next, to name or write
at dictation the notes of an exercise taken at haphazard ;
finally, to distinguish any notes in any key. I cannot
over-emphasise the importance of this training; it pro-

* Or the A, or any other note; but C has the advantage of being the
tonic of the typescale. The sensation of its sound is impressed by the
CMLtivation of the muscular sense.

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50 Rhythm, Music, and Exlucation

vides, so to speak, a double development of musical
faculties.

But whether oneadoptsmy system oranother is of little
matter. The essential is that the study of keys should
be undertaken as conscientiously and as meticulously as
possible. The course should extend over two or three
years, or even more — ^long enough, in any case, to enable
us to say of the pupil's Imowledge of the inter-relations
of the keys that, in the phrase of Montaigne: "It is
not incorporated in the spirit, but attached to it; for
the soul should be widened, not merely soaked in a
thing, and if it is not to be enlarged by learning, better
leave it alone altogether."

Once the scales are mastered, the remaining musical
studies — ^with the material exception of those of a
rhythmic order — ^will be child's play, the pupil finding
an explanation for everjrthing by reference to the scales :
intervals will be seen as fragments of scales, with
intermediate sounds left out; chords as notes of a scale
on top of one another; resolutions as the property
given to notes of a scale left suspended to continue
their progress; modulation as the linking of one scale
with another. . . . Everything relating to melody
and harmony is impUdt in the comparative study of
keys, and becomes thereafter only a question of ter-
minology and classification.

There remains the element of rhythm, whidi is also
of the highest importance. Analogous to absolute
pitch we may find an instinctive feeling for rhythm,
which may be awakened and developed by practice.

The gift of musical rhythm is not a mere mental

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Music Teaching in Schools 5^

affair; it is physical in essence. Diderot calls it "the
very image of the soul reproduced in the inflexions of
the voice, the successive variations of passages of a
speech,, accelerations, deliberations, sparkles, gulps,
punctuated in a htmdred different ways." For our
part, we r^;ard it as the reflex of instinctive corporal
movements, and as dependent on the gait, balance, and
general harmony of those movements. If a child, in
good health and otherwise without phjrsical defect,
shows some irregularity in his gait, this irregularity
wiU correspond in music to an irr^^ular manner of
measuring time. If, through lack of balance in his
movements, he finds difficulty, according as he starts
with the left or right foot, in accentuating by a stamp,
each first step of an alternating series in 2, 3, or 4
time he will have the same difficulty in accentuating
musically the first beats in bars of |, |, or |. If, in
making four steps, he has a tendency to make the
fourth shorter than the first, or vice versa, just the same
awkwardness will be reflected in his musical execution.
• . . A r^ular step is the natural apportioner of time
into equal fractions, and is the model of what we call
measure. The emphasis of one step in two, in three,
or in four respectively creates metrical accentuation.
And where, in the course of a series of equal steps, a
movement of the hand emphasises now one step, now
another, the gesture at once creates pathetic rhythmic
accentuation. Set a child to sing while in motion; if
his steps do not coincide with the beat of the time he
is singing, or which others may be singing, he is lacking
in a natural sense of time-measure. If he is tmable at
will to accenttiate one or another of the steps, he is

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52 Rhythm, Music, and Education

lacking in a natural sense of rhythm. And jtist as one
may teach a deaf-mute to speak by means of lip-move-
ments, which have no correspondence, in his mind, to
the idea of hearing, so, by accustoming the body to
regular sjrmmetrical movements under the control of
eye and muscular senses, a feeling for musical rhythm
may be produced in an a-rhythmic pupil. For, as La
Rochefoucauld puts it: "We are more disposed to in-
dolence in otir minds than in our bodies, and good
physical habits conduce to good mental ones."

Repeated **squad" drill produces regularity of step
in our soldiers. If we could train them to co-ordinate
this regularity with that demanded by musical measure
they would soon learn to sing in time. In respect of
accentuation, on the other hand, military training has
a bad effect on the body, as on the mind. It vitiates
natural balance by concentrating on the left foot and
the right arm. With its invariable ''left, right," it
tends to inhibit the sense of rhythmic co-ordination.
If only military instructors would train their men to
start off alternately with the left and right foot, to
"change arms" more frequently, to accentuate their
march to 3, 4, 5, and 6 time, in various tempi, and
sometimes alternating the time-beat, they wotdd see
how far less mechanical, and consequently less fatigu-
ing, marching would become, and what far more flexible
and quick-witted men they would turn out. They
would further demonstrate that rhythmic-mtmco/ were
developed along with rhythxmc-physical capacities, and
so help to procure the introduction of these preliminary
exercises into our schools.

We should likewise enlist the support of mothers, if

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Music Teaching in Schools S3

they could only realise how their daughters, by means of
these exercises, would lose their inveterate awkward-
ness and stiffness, and acquire that unaffected grace
produced by harmony of movements, which is no more
than complete self-expression.

Once regularity of gait and correct accentuation are
developed, it will remain only to enlighten pupils as to
the relations between them and the division of time in
music into equal parts, accentuated according to cer-
tain rules. The analogy will quickly establish itself.
We emphatically recommend any method, tending to
the study of rhythm, by means of exercises in cadenced
marching. These could quite well be taught in kinder-
gartens, independently of music, in the form of gym-
nastics. The child cotdd be trained in a whole series of
combinations of steps, without being made aware that
they were based on combinations of musical time-values.
When one came later to teach him the value of notes,
and to recognise their formations, one wotdd have
merely to remind him of his old marching exercises to
provide him with a metrical model as natural as it was
easy to follow — just as there are dancers to whom the
musical phrases of a ballet are only recalled by think-
ing of the steps by which they have learnt to represent
them. ... Is it generally realised that a child who
can dance the polka has plumbed the mysteries of a
I measure, consisting of two quavers followed by a
crochet, and that an oarsman has similarly mastered
I time composed of a minim and a crochet? Let us
advance on empiric principles, in the light of these
admittedly healthy activities. The child delights in
all manner of games in which his body may participate.

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54 Rhythm, Music, and Education

Gratify this instinct, and apply it to our scheme for
the education of the future. There is nothing to be
ashamed of in it. Let us be children with children; it
will be time enough to replace our spectacles when we
come to discuss music witii adtdt amateurs.

Finally, phrasing and shading must be learnt; and
this part of the training will produce positive enthtisi-
asm, relieving the monotony of certain exercises with
a wealth of poesy and beauty. Oh, the old-school
nuances of musical interpretation ! The cresc«idos, the
ffs, the pp's executed to order, without a pupil knowing
why, or feeling the slightest need for them; when the
whole art of phrasing and shading is so easy to explain,
so natural, so attractive, so susceptible of immediate
response from the child the least versed in questions
of technique! It should appeal especially to us Swiss,
compatriots of that marvellous theorist, Mathis Lussy, '
who has codified the laws of expression into a unique
book, * a monument of wisdom and artistic penetration !
I do not suggest that this book should be placed in the
hands of the children themselves, who could hardly be
expected to grasp its infinite subtleties, but, in Heaven's
name, let us introduce it into the colleges, and set
every music master to study it, and assimilate its
smallest details! They will there learn how everjrthing
in music can be related to ftmdamental physiological
laws; how each nuance, each accent has its raison-d'Ure;
how, finally, a melodic phrase, with its expressive and

' We had the misfortune to lose this man of genius in 1909. The
Association des Musiciens Suisses oommissioned M. Monod to write a
study of his work, and published it in 1913.

' Musical Expression: London, Novello & Co.

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Music Teaching in Schools 55

rhythmic interpretation, forms an organic entity, and
how intimately it is related to its harmonisation. They
will be shown how melody is constructed on the model
of the spoken word, and how, like the latter, it can be
punctuated by commas, full stops, and new paragraphs.
And, thus familiarised with the laws of musical prosody,
so wonderfully expotmded by Mathis Lussy, they will
assist this reformer in purging our collections of national
songs of the numerotis faults that disfigure them and
will learn themselves to compose choral works and
ballads in which poesy and music go hand in hand,
complementing and vitalising each other.

Once they commence teaching their pupils the real
elements of shading and phrasing, they will be astounded
and delighted to observe the interest they evoke and
the joy with which they are applied. We are too apt
to appeal to the child's instinct for imitation, to the
detriment of his sense of analysis and his inventive
faculties. In Pascal's words, "It is dangerous to let
the child see how like an animal he is, without also
^ showing him the grandeur and nobility that is in him."
The child loves nothing so much as to construct and
embellish, according to his fancy, things that appeal to
him. Similarly, he wants lessons which give scope for
individuality. Once he has learnt the primary rules of
shading, he will never want to sing a tune without
being allowed to embellish it with its natural comple-
ments— rhythmic and emotional expression and accen-
tuation. Reading will be mere drudgery to him. But
you will have only to say: "Now sing that with
expression," and his eyes will gleam, his face light up
with joy. The tune will at ooce appeal to him, because

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56 Rhythm, Music, and Education

he is to be allowed to give something of himself to it.
He will sing it with all his soul, only concerned to add
to its charm and life. And when he has come to an
end, and you ask him, "What mistakes have you made?"
how shrewdly he will know and tell you of the false
or omitted nuances! with what conviction he will cry,
"My rhjrthm was all wrong; I sang too loud, I forgot
to slow down!" And how he will love to try again, to
embellish it, to commimicate his vitality to it, to per-
meate it with his spirit! All children feel a craving to
create, and the teacher should lose no opporttmity of
turning this disposition to account. He should set
them, from their earliest lessons, to improvise short
phrases of two bars, then four, then eight, or to replace
a bar of a melody by one of their own composition. He
will find them revelling in such exercises, and making
rapid progress in improvising. Let him further appoint
different pupils to judge their comrades' efforts, and
he will note that their instinct for criticism and an-
alysis is as strong as that for creation, and that, with
practice, children can speedily acquire a really subtle
and discriminating judgment — asstuning, of course, that
they are provided with sound models on which to
develop their taste and discernment.

FinaJly, the choice of songs for purposes of school
study is a matter of no less importance. Apart from
folk-songs, the interpretation of which should be con-
fined to Section H. {vide supra), the repertoire of Sec-
tion I. should contain more difficult classical pieces, but
adapted to the scope of children. We should like, in
conclusion, to recommend to educational authorities a
liberal programme of performances in public (which far

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Music Teaching in Schools 57

from disturbing regular studies, provide a most whole-
some diversion in school life), open air festivities, and
walks to the accompaniment of singing — ^by this means
turning the lessons to practical use, and introducing
music into the real life of the school. . . .

Music lessons will never be really satisfactory until
they result inevitably in giving the child a genuine
taste for singing, both solo and choral, and for listening
to good music — ^the most stimulating and comforting of
the arts, the only one that enables us to express the
heart of hearts in us, and to sense the emotions common
to all creation. . . •

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CHAPTER III

"THE YOUNG LADY OP THE CONSERVA-
TOIRE AND THE PIANO" (1905)

Colleges of music formerly and to-day — The piano, the ear,
and music — WhcU does the piano student learn outside of
technique and the interpretation of the score? — Music at home
and in the concert-room — Advantages to piano teachers of
previous general musical education in the pupil — An appeal
to professional pianists.

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CHAPTER III

"the young lady of the conservatoire and the
piano" (1905)

"What a glow there is about you, Mr. So-and-So!
You've got some big business up your sleeve, I'll be
bound!"

"Not a bit of it, only, my daughter Leonora has just
passed with honours her pianoforte exam, at the College
of Music. I won't deny that I'm somewhat elated by
the happy event. It's gratifying to fed that one's
daughter is such a good musician."

"You regard her progress as a pianist, then, as proof
of her musical development?"

"WeU, naturally."

"You are mistaken, Mr. So-and-So. A pianoforte
training has not always either the object or the restilt
of cultivating musical capacities. On the contrary, too
often it does not go beyond providing a useless musical
technique to persons who are not musical.

"Formerly all musicians, without exception, were
versed in every side of musical technique: to-day this
all-round education is only given to composers. The
schools of music are filled with young men and women
possessing good fingers, lungs, vocal chords, and wrists,
but lacking alike a good ear, intelligence, and 'soul.'
These young people imagine that they have only to learn

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62 Rhythm, Music, and Education

to play an instrument to become master-musicians;
and the public, for the most part, is incapable of distin-
guishing between an artist and a virtuoso. In the old
days, the latter had to be an artist; to-day he is often no-
thing more than an artisan. Just as in former times ca-
binet-makers and glass-blowers were at once creators
and workmen, themselves devising the models they exe-
cuted, while, nowadays, they are content to imitate the
old models, or to execute the artistic conceptions of
paid designers. There you have an example of artistic
decline to which too little attention is given — ^but to
the matter in hand.

** Three-quarters of the students who enter schools of
music are not bom musicians. Before embarking on
lessons suitable for students with good ear, exceptional
sensibilities, and fine taste, less accomplished students
should receive a preparatory training in ear, sensibility,
and taste. Without that they can derive no real benefit
from music lessons — they will become mere parrots or
apes instead of musicians and men.''

"Do you really believe that training can make a bad
ear good?"
**The ear can most certainly be trained."
' ' Or that it can give a person musical understanding ?' '
''It will develop such, if it is susceptible of develop-
ment.
''That it can create musical taste?'*
"It will awaken and mould it, if the germ exists."
"Aha! your reply satisfies me that your famous
special training will have no effect on persons devoid
of musical aptitude."
"The conventional system can't make a musician of

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^ Young Lady of the Conservatoire '* 63

a deaf man. The trouble is that it makes a pianist of
him! and therein lies the whole folly of the business.
In amateurs possessing the rudiments of taste, and a
moderate ear, neither is developed, but only fingers.
Those without any capacity whatever are taught the
use of the pedal I and all these four-handed creatures
dare to criticise music and musicians on the strength
of knowing the A B C of pianoforte technique. Ah,
Mr. So-and-So, the piano is the modem Golden Calf!"

* * Don't excite yourself, my good sir. You artists can
never keep your tempers."

"Not you amateurs your tempi T'

''Come, come ! Let us discuss the matter calmly and
rationally. You tell me that children should not be
taught the piano?"

"I didn't say that. I merely contend that an ama-
teur should learn music before he touches the piano."

''But the piano is music!"

"The barrel-organ is also music, but people are not
taught it. However, we will discuss the matter calmly,
and rationally, as you propose. Do you know what an
amateur is?"

"An amateur of music — derived from the Latin
anuUor, from the verb amare — ^is, my dear friend, a
person who loves music."

"Very good. And now tell me this, my friend. Do
you love your wife?"

"Do I—? What a question!"

"Of course you love her, I know; she has told me so
herself. . . . And do you know her?"

"Do I—? What ar^ you talking about?"

' ' One moment ! You know the colour of her eyes, her

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64 Rhythm, Music, and Education

hair, her complexion? You know her preferences, her
tastes, her aptitudes ? You know, so to speak, your way
about both her mind and heart? "

"Of course I do."

"I admit my question was absurd. You love your
wife and you know her. You love her because you know
her, and if you didn't know her you wouldn't love her.
Well, let me tell you, there are amateur pianists who
love the piano without knowing anything of music, but
simply out of a desire to imitate people who love the
piano because they know it. Now I contend that one
can really love and continue to love someone or some-
thing, music or woman (the two things are of the
same essence) only provided one knows that someone or
something. And that, accordingly, before everything
else, our future amateur musicians should be brought
to know this music that they love, perhaps instinctively,
but which they can never truly love until they know
it properly."

''Well, and the piano ?"

"The piano represents music in the same way as the
photograph of Madame So-and-So represents your wife.
The photograph recalls to you the features of a lady
with whose moral and intellectual qualities you are
intimately acquainted. The piano recalls to your ear
thoughts whose depth, charm, and poetry you should
likewise be in a position to appreciate. Hie basis of
the training to be given amateurs should be the study
not of the mechanical means of expression, but of the
thoughts that are to be expressed. Once a child can
sing correctly, assimilate melodies, analyse chords and
melodic successions, distinguish rhythms, phrase infal-

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"Young Lady of the Conservatoire** 65

libly, appreciate fonns, produce vocal shadings and
accentuations with taste — well, then, you may justi-
fiably sit him down before a piano. After fotir years
of apprenticeship at the instrument, he'll know more
than he'd have leamt in six years without having first
studied aural training, and, what's more important,
he'll know it better."

'•Well, well, well! If you insist, we'll grant you your
solfdge; all the same, fingers are an important element
in pianoforte playing, and solfdge alone won't make
them flexible."

•'Your point is a sound one. The fingers of the
pianist of the future will necessarily be submitted to a
special gymnastic course conducive to flexibility. But
this course will be independent of the study of the piano,
and will not be of a specially musical character."

• • In that case, the fingers will play incorrectly, the mo-
ment they're put to the piano, despite all your solf^e."

•* Perhaps but the ear, as a result of the thorough
training accorded it, will at once correct the mistakes
of the fingers, and control the latter. Thus, from the
first lesson, the fingers will be subservient to musical
taste, whereas, under the present system, finger exer-
cises/orm the taste."

"The cart before the horse?"

*• Exactly ! I take off my hat to you. Not only have
you come round to my way of thinking, but you take
the words out of my mouth."

•'You were speaking of piano lessons to commence
after fotir years of solf ^e. How are you going to con-
duct these lessons?"

"With a view to the attainment of their aim. . . .

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66 Rhythm, Music, and Education

Tell me, what is your daughter Leonora learning at
the moment, after — ^is it not? — twelve years at the
Conservatoire?"

''Eleven and a half only, my friend! Leonora is at
present studying Liszt's second Rhapsody, a pretty hard
piece, I can tell you!"

"Splendid! And how long has yotir daughter been
on the Rhapsody?"

"Only two months. But she's got it at her finger-
ends at last."

* * Splendid ! And having it at her finger-ends, she has
it in her head as well, I suppose. She understands the
structure-^ — ?"

"Seeing that she knows it by heart!"

"She can follow the modulations?"

"Of course!"

"She told you so?"

"I never asked her."

"Her master asked her, I expect?"

"No doubt."

"Splendid! And what was Miss Leonora playing
before the Rhapsody?"

"Beethoven's sonata, *Les Adieux.' "

"Does she still play it?"

"Not exactly. You know these very diffictdt pieces
require the deuce of a lot of keeping up."

"But . . . she knows Beethoven?"

"What a question, such a well-known composer!"

"I mean ^e knows other works of his besides that
sonata?"

"She has played also the Concerto in E flat and the
'Ruins of Athens.'"

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"Young Lady of the Conservatoire" 67

"And what about the pieces she hasn't played?"

**If you imagine she has time to leam pieces she can't
play!"

"She could leam the principal motifs of other famous
sonatas, of the quartets, of the nine Symphonies."

"Well, I confess "

"And to come back to the Concerto, does she know
that it was written with orchestral accompaniment?"

' * Of course ! It's written on the score. ' '

"She knows what an orchestra is?"

"Who doesn't?"

"She can distinguish a bassoon from a clarinet?"

"I should hope so."

"An oboe from a flute?"

"Pooh! the oboes are held vertically, the flutes
horizontally."

"But I was speaking of their sounds."

"Oh,/M/ ..."

"Does she know an English horn?"

"Who doesn't ken John Peel ? ' Oh, the sound of his
horn brought me from my bed! ' "

"I see. And so an English horn is just a horn?"

"Made in England."

"Delightful! . . . Now tell me, Mr. So-and-So, if
you'll forgive my indiscretion. I take it your daughter,
in the bosom of her family, of an evening, will run
through the most exquisite passages of the classical and
modem composers ? ' '

"Not very often. In the first place — to be qtiite
honest — ^her time's not all that it should be. . . .
Besides, she has so little leisure for playing. . . .
She's always working at her latest piece."

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68 Rhythm, Music, and Education

''Quite. And this latest piece, what is her object in
learning it?"

**To train her fingers."

"And her object in training her fingers?"

''To be able to play her piece."

"Hm! and where will she play it?"

"At her college exam."

"Is that all?"

"Possibly at a students' concert."

"What for?"

"To show the progress she's made, and accustom
herself to playing in public."

"Does she intend to become a virtuoso?"

"Oh no, but "

"Before whom will she play at this concert?"

"Before a gathering of friends."

"Will the press be represented?"

"NaturaUy."

"And the papers will mention your daughter?"

' * I should think so. They've already cracked her up."

"They've mentioned her name, your name?"

"They have indeed! And I was really rather proud,
I can tell you. You should have heard my friends at
thecaf6! . . . All, except Dr. Thingtminiybob, whose
daughter has never been chosen to play at a concert.
He looked rather glum. . . ."

"Well, I congratulate you. But will you bear with
me a little further?"

"Go ahead!"

"Does Miss Leonora take part in ensemble playing?"

"Once a week at the College."

"Not in her home?"

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"Young Lady of the Conservatoire" 69

''My dear sir, unfortunately, neither her mother nor
I play a note.''

' * But at the Collie she has her comrades — ^her pianist
and violinist friends? Possibly she has made the
acquaintance of a handsome young 'cellist?''

"What an idea!"

"I only thought ... A college, congenial surround-
ings, a sincere desire to make music, reading interesting
new works . . . and duet-playing is so delightful!
. . . However! And, no doubt, your daughter studies
singing?"

"Of course!"

"How splendid for you! How you must revel in the
exquisite ballads of Schubert, Schumann, Faur6, Wolff,
Cornelius, Robert Franz, Max Reger, Grieg, Sibelius,
Chausson, Ropartz, d'Indy, Debussy, de Br6ville!
. . . What a treat for you!"

"Hm! Leonora doesn't go in for ballads so much.
The opera's more her line."

"Oh! Does she intend to make it her career?"

"Good Lord, no! She sings excerpts from operas,
because they give them to her to sing!"

"All the same, she must, as a singer, be well up in the
classical and contemporary masters of song?"

"Not particularly. She knows a little Schubert and
Schumann, I believe, . . . the best known."

"But the others, the numerous others?"

"She hasn't time."

"Of course. I was forgetting. . . . Another question.
When your daughter calls on one of her friends, and is
asked to try the piano, is she able to improvise a few
chords?"

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70 Rhythm, Music, and Education

**No; but she always has a piece in reserve for these
occasions."

"But can she improvise? It's so useful, after finish-
ing one piece, to be able to lead up to the next by a
few modulations."

**She doesn't require to; she's never asked for more
than one piece."

"But for her own purposes?"

"Oh, she doesn't bother about leading up to another
piece when she's by herself."

"She can accompany songs, I suppose?"

"She's tried her hand at it; but, you know, singers
are so difficult to follow. ..."

"Can she transpose accompaniments higher or lower
at request?*'

"Not herself. She gets them written out for her."

"If you recall a tune of your youth, can she play it
by ear?"

"You're joking! She's only an amateur, not a real
musician."

"Still, I suppose she can rattle off, for the benefit of
her young brothers and sisters, folk-tunes which she
doesn't happen to possess in print?"

"Oh, we've always the means of buying them."

"At your family parties, she can oblige with a little
dance music, I presume?"

"Sometimes; but, you know, we don't like her to
play dance music. ... It requires such a lot of
practice to keep time properly."

* * I agree, it requires practice. And in twelve years —
I beg your pardon, eleven and a half — ^it is evident that
— But tell me frankly, do you not sometimes re-

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"Young Lady of the Conservatoire* 71

gret that your daughter isn't able to play dance music,
and with the right verve?"

"I won't conceal it from you, I do regret it."

"And the rest — do you regret that, too?"

"The rest?"

"Yes, the rest : those lost evenings at the fireside with
your daughter reeling off beautiful melodies while her
mother sews and you smoke your pipe; those missing
accompaniments from ear to the tunes of yotir youth;
that knack, as her hands wander over the keys, of
refreshing heart and ear by some impromptu strains —
to give form to her thoughts, her dreams, her little
joys and sorrows? . . . The rest? All the' other
things I enumerated, and which look so easy, and which
your daughter can't do, though she can execute so
admirably that difficult Rhapsody of Liszt that you
are so fond of hearing — and that, I'll bet, you've heard
often enough.'*

"Well, the piano is in the drawing-room, next to
my study. ..."

"That's nice for you, isn't it?"

"No, it isn't nice for me, I can tell you! And if it
weren't for her concerts and the papers and Dr. Thing-
ummybob — But you're leading me on to make
such confessions, . . . you mocker!"

"Say, rather, comforter. The story of Miss Leonora
is the story of nearly every young girl who spends
twelve years of her life "

"Eleven and a half!"

"Who spends eleven and a half years of her life in
practising scales to enable her to play Liszt's second
Rhapsody— which a pianola, without any practice,

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12 Rhythm, Music, and Education

can play far better — and who, a fortnight after the
exam, or concert, won't be able to play eight bars of it
without breaking down ! She devotes eleven and a half
years of her life to studying the piano without giving
a moment's thought to music, without knowing any-
thing of the great composers and their styles, and
their works; without being able to express her own
thoughts by a few simple chords; without knowing how
to accompany or transpose, or play chamber music;
without even being able to provide dance music for
her friends; without giving her father and mother a
little satisfaction, which isn't just pride, ... for 1*11
bet Miss Leonora declines to play her grand Rhapsody
in her own family circle?"

''Resolutely!"

"She declines because she's always between two diffi-
cult pieces; one of which she is learning, the other for-
getting; the result being that she can play only one or
the other at a given hotu-, a given minute. She and her
ntunerous comrades have neither understanding nor
love for music. For proof, you have only to wait till
they marry, when they give it up without a pang.
Your regrets, Mr. So-and-So, which are shared by all
fathers, by all real musicians, satisfy me that I am
right in advocating a reform of our system of teaching
music. This reform is simple and practicable. It ap-
plies not only to the piano, but to every instrument, and
to the voice. It consists in including in the curriculum
practical exercises for the training of the ear and the
taste, and for the awakening of the individuality of the
pupil; in familiarising amatetu-s with the beautiful,
in acquainting them with the styles of the classical

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"Youiig Lady of the Conservatoire*' 73

masters, in enabling them to compare and analyse them ;
in furnishing them with a mechanism adequate for
reading fairly difl&cult pieces without mistakes, and
with the technical and aesthetic equipment for interpret-
ing works with feeling, but without sentimentality, with
^passion, but without hysteria, with rhjrthm, but with-
out show. Always provided that pupils, gifted with
powers of so high an order as to enable them to in-
terpret pieces of extreme virtuosity, instinctively and
witihout the slightest sacrifice of style, be permitted to
pursue their technical bent; but not, in Heaven's
name, before the moulding of their spirit and heart to
the understanding and love of the art! . . . We as-
pire by these means to produce a race of amateurs who
will attend concerts no longer out of snobbishness, but
from a yearning for beauty, who will appreciate the
works they hear, because they have taken the trouble
to familiarise themselves with their structure and ana-
lyse their content. Pupils destined for an artistic
career will no longer have their progress impeded
by the participation in their studies of budding ama-
teurs. They will strive incessantly to overcome the
technical diflBculties that are daily intensifying; and
will take up the study of philosophy, ethics, and aes-
thetics, indispensable to the artist of to-day. As to
those pianoforte teachers — and they are many — who,
victims of circtmistances, are obliged to inculcate the
technique of the piano into young people ignorant of
the fundamental laws of music, they will heave a sigh
of relief at finding themselves discharged from their
thankless occupation as teachers of scales and arpeggios
and will be only too happy and proud to change their

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74 Rhythm, Music, and Education

vocation to that of the music-teacher of old — ^initiators
into the cult of eternal beauty.**

''I quite realise the importance of this reform: I
appreciate all its advantages. . . . But the applica-
tion of your ideas, the programme to be carried out,
the technical means of accomplishing the artistic results
you have in mind — ^what a complicated, if not utterly
impracticable, business!"

''On the contrary, nothing will be simpler. We have
first of all to submit our scheme to the professional
musicians of our country ; to put this question to them :
'Is it possible to teach musically gifted children (i) to
listen to and to hear music; (2) to read it; (3) to phrase
and shade without merely imitating models; (4) to
transpose; (5) to improvise; (6) to learn melodic and
harmonic laws; (7) to possess a general idea of the
progress of music throughout the ages, to know the
great composers and their most important works, and
to be able to quote them, and from them ; and (8) finally
to understand and fed — ^that is, to lave — ^music?*"

"There will be nothing further to ask. If our musi-
cians reply in the affirmative, the reform will be accom-
plished, for the means are easy in the extreme. It is
simply a question of teaching what wasn't taught
before.*'

"And what, in your opinion, will be the reply of the
musicians of our country?"

"The reply will be in the affirmative."

"And what will become of children absolutely anti-
pathetic to music?"

"Oh, they'll have to be eliminated."

"You are an extremist, my friend I But having

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"Young Lady of the Conservatoire*' 75

received this reply in the aflSrmative, how will you next

I?"

''We will approach the adherents of the old sjrstem,
and we will say to them : 'Gentlemen, you have devoted
time enough to the musical development of our people.
We recognise and thank you for your perseverance,
your zeal, your noble and artistic intentions, but we
are persuaded that you are working on wrong lines.
We want you to make our children musicians, and not
mere virtuosos. The new methods are quite practicable.
We will answer for them, if you will come into line,
thereby rendering the highest service both to art and
to your cotmtry.* . . . And what do you think the
really intelligent and musical spirits among them will
reply to that?'*

"They will reply in the aflSrmative."

"And the others — those that don't?"

"Oh, they'll have to be eliminated."

"You are an extremist now, Mr. So-and-SoI"

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CHAPTER IV

THE INITIATION INTO RHYTHM (1907)

Ear, voice, and consciousness of sound — Body and con--
sciousness of rhythm — A nalysis of relations between movements
of voice and those of whole muscular system — Movements in
time and space — Necessity for developing vitality of muscular
movements to make music alive — Gesture and rhythmic reac-
tions— Birth of rhythmic thought (rhythmic feding) — Poly-
rhythm and polydynamics— Physical capacity of different
races — Necessity for collaboration of parents to establish a
composite rhythmic culture.

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To my dMT fHsmd

CHAPTER IV "^^i^!^'

THE INITIATION INTO RHYTHM (1907)

To be completely musical, a child should possess an
ensemble of physical and spiritual resources and capaci-
ties, comprising, on the one hand, ear, voice, and con-
sciousness of sound, and, on the other, the whole body
(bone, muscle, and nervous systems), and the conscious-
ness of bodily rhythm.

The ear enables us to perceive sound and rhjrthm, and
to control this perception. The voice provides the
means of reproducing sound, enabling us to realise the
idea the ear has formed of a sotmd.

Consciousness of sound is the faculty of the mind and
whole being to "place," without recourse either to the
voice or to an instrument, any succession or combina-
tion of sounds, and to distinguish any melody or har-
mony by comparing the sounds of which it is composed.
This consciousness is acquired after repeated experi-
ences of both ear and voice.

By means of movements of the whole body, we may
equip ourselves to realise and i)erceive rhythms.

Consciousness of rhythm is the faculty of "placing"
every succession and combination of fractions of time
in all their gradations of rapidity and strength. This

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8o Rhythm, Music, and Education

consciousness is acquired by means of muscular con-
tractions and relaxations in every degree of strength
and rapidity.

No schoolmaster would set a child to draw some-
thing with which he was not familiar, and before he
knew how to handle a pencil. Nor would he begin to
teach him geography before, having learnt to walk and
gesticulate, he had acquired an elementary sense of
space; i^or direct him to draw a map until he could
not only handle a pencil and trace lines, but had also
acquired both a sense of space and an idea of the lie of
the coimtry. No one can exercise several faculties at
the same time before he has acquired, however crudely,
at least one faculty.

Consciousness of sotmd can only be acquired by re-
iterated experiences of the ear and voice; consciousness
of rhythm by reiterated experiences of movements of
the whole body. Since the practice of music demands
the simultaneous co-operation of ear, voice, and muscu-
lar system — and it is obviously impossible, in the early
stages of music study, to train all these musical media
at the same time — the question arises as to which of
them should be attended to first.

The movements that produce the voice in all its
shades of pitch and loudness are of a secondary order,
depending on the elementary rhythm of breathing. We
are therefore left to choose between the muscular system
and the ear, confining otu-selves to the capacity of each
of these — ^not of forming sotmd, since this depends on
the special muscular activity of breathing, but of exe-
cuting and perceiving rhythms.

The muscular system perceives rhjrthms. By means

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The Initiation into Rhythm 8i

of repeated daily exercises, muscular memory may be
acquired, conducing to a clear and regular representa-
tion of rhythm.

The ear perceives rhythms. By means of repeated
daily exercises, sound memory may be acquired, sharp-
ening and stimulating the critical faculties. This will
enable the student to compare the perception of sound
rhythms with their representation.

If, at this stage — working on the principle that execu-
tion should precede perception and criticism — ^we com-
pare the f tmctions of the ear with those of the muscular
system, we arrive at the conclusion that the first place
in the order of elementary music training should be
accorded the muscular system.

It may be objected that the perception of rhjrthm by
a child does not necessitate its execution on the part
of the child himself, the rhythmic and metrical move-
ments effected by an object or by other individuals
being equally capable of awakening in his body and
mind the perception of those movements; and that, on
the other hand, only the memory of rhythms perceived
outside of himself will enable him to realise them in his
own person. . . . However logical this argiunent may
sound, I adhere to my opinion, fotmded on the observa-
tion that a child's body possesses instinctively the
essential element of rhythm which is sense of time.
Thus: — (i) the beats of the heart, by their regularity,
convey a clear idea of time, but they are a matter of
unconscious activity, independent of the will, and
therefore valueless for the purposes of execution and
perception of rhythm. (2) The action of breathing
provides a regular division of time, and is thus a model

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82 Rhythm, Music, and Education

of measure. The respiratory muscles being subject to
the will, in however qualified a degree, we are able to
operate them rhythmically, that is to say, to divide the
time and accentuate each division by a stronger mus-
cular tension. (3) A regular gait furnishes us with a
perfect model of measure and tlie division of time into
equal portions.

Now the locomotor muscles are conscious muscles,
subject to absolute control by the will. We therefore
find in walking the nattu-al starting-point in the child's
initiation into rhythm.

But walking is only the starting-point, for the feet
and legs are not the only limbs set in motion by con-
scious muscles, and so available for the awakening and
development of the consciousness of rhythm. This con-
sciousness demands the co-operation of all conscious
muscles, and thus a training of the whole body is re-
quired to create rhythmic feeling. We may remark, in
passing, that herein lies the complete condemnation of
the present method of musical tuition, which consists
in teaching a child an instrument before his organism
has a clear and distinct consciousness of measured and
rhythmic muscular movements.

Muscles were made for movement, and rhythm is
movement. It is impossible to conceive a rhjrthm with-
out thinking of a body in motion. To move, a body
requires a quantum of space and a quantum of time.
The beginning and end of the movement determine the
amount of time and space involved. Each depends on
the gravity, that is to say (in relation to the limbs set
in motion by the muscles), on the elasticity and muscu-
lar force of the body.

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The Initiation into Rhythm 83

If we assign in advance the ratio between the mtiscu-
lar energy to be deployed and the quantum of space to
be traversed, we determine thereby also the quantum
of time.

If we assign in advance the ratio between the muscu-
lar force and the quantum of time, we thereby deter-
mine the quantum of space. In other words, the
finished movement is the product of the combination
of muscular energy and the space and time involved
in its formation.

If we assign in advance the amounts of space and
time it is incHspensable, in order to eflEect a movement
in harmony, that we should have mastered our bodily
mechanism: a lack of control would cause us either to
exceed the space or curtail the time, while, on the other
hand, a too long retention would result in either
leaving a portion of the space uncovered or in exceed-
ing the time. Neither weakness, stiffness, nor inat-
tention should be permitted to modify the formation
of a movement, and a properly executed rhjrthm re-
quires, as a preliminary condition, complete mastery of
movements in relation to energy, space, and time.

To summarise the preceding observations, we may
establish the following conclusions: —

1. Rhythm is movement.

2. Rhjrthm is essentially physical.

3. Every movement involves time and space.

4. Musical consciousness is the result of physical

experience.

5. The perfecting of physical resources results in clarity

of perception.

6. The perfecting of movements in time assures con-

sciousness of musical rh3rthm.

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84 Rhythm, Music, and Education

7. The perfecting of movements in spax^ assures con-

sciousness of plastic rhythm.

8. The p«fecting of movements in time and space

can only be accomplished by exercises in rhythmic
movement.

As trainers of body and ear, we are faced with two
important questions.

I . Should we exercise the limbs of a child ?

Certainly we should. Music requires finger exercises,
and hygiene demands the training of the rest of the
body, without music. No harm is done in training the
fingers of a pianist without reference to sound. Indeed,
we have found numerous people, of good musical ear,
so captivated by sound that they lose all sense of time,
dtu-ation, and accentuation, and thus accustom them-
selves to ignore it or treat it as of secondary importance.
(Vide the so-called "d la Chopin" school of pianoforte
playing.) If at the conunencement of a lesson sound
is eliminated, rhythm attracts the whole attention of
the pupil. Rhythm is the basis of all art. But in gym-
nastics, of the hygienic and athletic orders, the body
is exercised without reference to rhjrthm; and the
smattering of regularity and symmetry with which the
bodily movements of the class are invested, to facili-
tate the supervision of the simultaneous movements of
its members, serves neither to awaken nor to produce
rhythmic consciousness. To develop the sense of
rhjrthm in a child it is not enough to set him to execute
regular and simultaneous movements; he must be ac-
customed to movements of divers intensity, producing
divisions of time whose different durations are in a
musical rhythmic relation.

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The Initiation into Rhythm 85

2. Should limbs other than the fingers be trained
with a view to the appreciation of rhythm? Every
conscientious observer will reply with an emphatic
affirmative, for he will have noticed that defects in
musical rhythmic expression are invariably results of
physical defects in the musician. Moreover, while the
most difficult exercises in complex movement are
achieved with the greatest ease by pupils endowed with
a sense of musical rhythm, however defective their
physique, the simplest exercises present enormous diffi-
culties to those who lack that sense, be they never so
well proportioned. A person of rhythmic propensities
always presents a certain harmony, an effect of perfect
corporal balance; and physical grace can only be ac-
quired or developed in children in corresponding degree
to their instinct for rhythm.

It may be noted that there is an intimate connection
between rhjrthm in all its shades and gesture. A com-
plete musician, to mark a sharp, vigorous accentua-
tion, will shoot out his clenched fist; his thumb and
first finger will unite to describe a fine, acute touch ; his
hands will sway apart to indicate an effect of delicacy
and softness. . . . His body is an involuntary medi-
tun for the expression of thought. But there are in-
complete musicians in whom this capacity for corporal
expression requires developing with as much care as
would be devoted to the exercising of weak fingers or
rigid joints in a piano student.

When a pupil at the piano commits an error in
rh3rthm, the limbs of his teacher involtmtarily seek to
rectify it, not merely by beating the time (that is a con-
scious gesture, with a definite pedagogic aim), but by a

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86 Rhythm, Music, and Education

spontaneous effort of the whole body to put the accent
in the right place. Not merely one of his limbs, but all his
limbs simultaneously, stiffen, infusing energy into his
muscles and conveying to the pupil the image of what
he should have sensed in committing the error. For he
himself should have been guided by the representation
of rhythm, reflected in all the muscles of his body. The
consciousness of rhythm once attained, thanks to the
necessary exercises, produces a constant reciprocal in-
fluence of the rhythmic action in its representation, and
vice versa. The teacher, in expotmding rhythm by
gesttu-e, transposes into movement the representation
of his own consciousness, and involuntarily seeks, by
this manifestation, to awaken its representation in the
pupil, in order that the latter may forthwith transpose
it into the form of movement appropriate to him. The
rejwesentation of rhythm, the reflex of a rhythmic ac-
tion, is potential in all our muscles. Inversely, rhyth-
mic movement is the visible manifestation of rhythmic
consciousness. The one follows the other in uninter-
rupted sequence. They are indissolubly linked to-
gether.

Observe the movements by which a conductor of an
orchestra, endowed with temperament, represents and
transmits rhjrthm. Does he confine himself to move-
ments of the arm alone in seeking to convey to the
instrumentalists the image of the rhythm they are to
create? By no means. His knees will stiffen, his foot
will press against the platform, his back will straighten,
his finger and wrist movements harden. His whole
body will be seen to co-operate in his representation of
the rhythm: each articulation, each muscle, contribut-

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The Initiation into Rhythm 87

ing to render the rhythmic impression more intense;
the aspect of his whole person becoming, in short, the
reflected image of the movement of the music, and ani-
mating the executants — ^his own representation of the
rhythm being transmuted to them.

Another example. After my little (or big) pupils have
practised eurythmics for a certain time, I give them
' 'exercises in interrupted marching. * * They will execute
a few bars of a rhythmic m^ch, then halt for a bar
(later, for several bars), in the position of the last exe-
cuted bar. The duration of the interruption, the pause,
must be estimated and accentuated only in thought;
it being strictly forbidden to cotmt out loud, or imder
the breath, or to move any limb. Yet what do I find?
Those who have not yet attained confidence in the
faculty they are on the way to acquire (that of thinking
in rhythm) seek to deceive me (and themselves too,
perhaps) in employing muscles other than those of the
leg to execute the rhythm. I catch movements of an
eyelid, a nostril, a toe, even an ear, and I have had
expressly to prohibit the beating of time with the
tongue (while scarcely in a position to control it!) . . .
And every musician, by experimenting on himself, will
find that, after counting one or two bars mentally, he
will feel resonating in his whole organism, so to speak,
the echo of the time- value, and that, while he appears
to be immobile, his muscles are invisibly collaborating
with his mental process.

Man instinctively feels rhythmic vibrations in all his
conscious muscles; that is why it behoves a teacher of
rhythm to train through and in rhythm the whole mus-
cular system, so that every muscle may contribute its

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88 Rhythm, Music, and Education

share in awakening, clarifying, moulding, and perfecting
rhythmic consciousness.

The training of the physical will, or the disciplining
of the nerve-centres, consists not only in developing
the necessary activity of the muscles, but also in learn-
ing to reduce these to inaction in cases where their
intervention is not required. This training has no
place in the regular courses either of music or of gym-
nastics, yet it is of the highest importance. Every
piano-teacher will have noticed that pupils, on being
initiated into the use of the pedal, find it much more
difficult to remove their foot than to place it there, and
more difficult to place it on a weak than on a strong
beat. Repeated practice will overcome this inability
of the foot to isolate itself from the influence of the
hand; indeed, this special faculty comes naturally to
gifted pupils. But is it wise to confide to Mother
Nature the tuition of the less gifted? And would not
even bom eurhythmists arrive far earlier at their goal
if they were subjected to muscular training before
attempting instrumental studies? It is the same with
students of the violin, where bow hand is so difl&cult
to free from the influence of the left hand, and it is
also much more difficult to withdraw the fingers from
the strings than to place them there. The explanation
is that a decrescendo of muscular innervation is much
more difficult to accomplish than a crescendo, just as
the gradual acceleration is easier than the abatement
of a movement.

There is another important reason why, for the
rhythmic training of man, it is necessary to exercise
aU his limbs, and that is — that a child is rarely bom

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The Initiation into Rhythm 89

polyrh5rthmic. To create in him the sense of simultane-
ous rhy thms» it is indispensable that he shotild be made to
execute, by means of different limbs, movements rep-
resenting different durations of time. These exercises
will enable him to subdivide bars into even shorter
intervals of time. One limb, for example, may
execute the quarter-values of the time, another the
eighths, a third the sixteenths — or, by way of variation,
one the quarter- values, another the same in syncopa-
tion— and by this means he will attain the necessary
facility in dissociating movements to enable him to
practise and observe pol)rrhythm.

While precise relations of time, space, and energy
determine the form of the movement, rhythm demands
different forms of movement for different accentuations
(in other words, different degrees of muscular energy).
Accordingly, the study of poljrrhythm involves that of
polydynamics.

Let us return to the conductor, who will express vio-
lence with one hand and tenderness with the other,
and at the same time signalises rhythms of different
diu-ations, and we have a perfect illustration of the com-
bination of poljrrhythm with polydynamics. It is es-
sential that the rhythmician should possess absolute
freedom of limb.

To sum up: music is composed of soimd and move-
ment. Sound is a form of movement of a secondary,
rhythm of a primary, order. Musical studies should
therefore be preceded by exercises in movement. Every
limb — first separately, then simultaneously, finally
the whole body — should be set in rhythmic motion;
the resulting formations, i.e., the relations between the

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90 Rhythm, Music, and Education

energy, space, and time involved, being carefully col-
lated and regtdated.

The mastery of muscular energy being essential for
the perfect realisation of rhythm, the mtiscles should
be subjected separately and simultaneously to dynamic
exercises, involving gradations of force, successive
transitions, and sudden contrasts — ^likewise contrasting
simultaneous contrasts.

The child should also be trained to introduce inter-
vals of time between the movements to be set to rhythm
or measure, so as to become conscious of his capacity
for representing rhythm and acquire the mental per-
ception of movement. He should then be taught to
distinguish the movement from the soimd in musical
rhythms, and to transpose them corporally and plastic-
ally. Thereby his perceptions will be sharpened, his
experience enlarged, his judgment moulded, and his ear
habituated to discern rhythmic values without the aid
of his eyes, and — once pitch is acquired — he will be able
to hear soimd without the aid of his physical ear.

By these divers methods of forming rhythmic con-
sciousness, the pupil will come to appreciate time- values
and their notation; his respiratory muscles, fully
trained, will be entirely under his control, and he will
be ready to imdertake, without risk to his voice, the
study of tonality. When the tonal sense in its turn
has been formed by daily exercises of the ear and voice,
then will be the time, and not before, to resort to
instrumental studies. The pupil, who will have ac-
quired a perfect confidence in his consciousness of
rhythm and sound, with a rich experience of forms of
movement and perfect mastery of a well-trained mus-

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The Initiation into Rhythm 91

cular system to draw on, may henceforth devote his
whole attention to his instrument, practice at which
will have become no longer a torture, but a delight.

I have often noticed, in hearing my children's songs
executed in different countries, that the children of
southern climes have a nattiral aptitude for the accom-
plishment of supple and graceful movement, but lack
precision and force in executing energetic and emphatic
gestures; while children of northern cotmtries possess
the facidty of effectively pimctuating rhythms by
means of gesttire, but not that of balancing and shading
successions of roi^ded movements. We may conclude
from this that the rhythmic character of the music of a
coimtry will conform to the physical aptitudes of its
inhabitants, for, as is well known, grace and flexibility
(in conjtmction with lack of continuous accentuation)
are the distinctive features of the spirit of "Mediterra-
nean" music, while the Teutonic musical characteristics
are vigour and force of accentuation, allied to a too
sudden and rapid opposition of forte and piano— thaX is,
lack of flexibility in shading. I claim that special
courses of training will furnish the Southern child with
the faculty of accentuation, the Northern with the
desired flexibility, thus affecting positively deep-lying
tendencies on tihe one hand, and negatively on the
other.

All these principles sotmd extremely simple, and it
is probably owing to that simplicity that they are no-
where practised. It would seem (to adopt somebody's
analogy) that music is regarded as a fortress that has
to be assailed on all sides at once. Those in possession
extol its magnificence, splendour, and immensity, they

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92 Rhythm, Music, and Education

insist on the number of wings and annexes that belong
to it, and then are surprised to find people fight shy of it,
though they themselves have pronoimced it accessible
only to a highly select few. And yet it is open to
every one, provided the proper equipment is secured in
advance.

Undoubtedly there are impediments to the realisa-
tion of our ideals. One of them is the prejudice of
parents on the subject of the corporal education of
their children. They manifest an extraordinary jealousy
on the subject, as though they regarded physical culture
as their exclusive province. They raise no objection to
other people filling their children's heads with ideas
quite foreign to their own, but they will not have their
bodies tampered with, fhey will not allow you to give
them balance, to render them vigorous and supple, and
to bring out their natural grace. . . . ''Grace," they
tell you, ''develops coquetry," but without adding
that "intellectual grace" necessarily involves coquetry
of the mind! . . . "Render the mind flexible — by
all means. But hands off the body!" . . . The
amazing inconsistency of it ! . . . Once this prejudice
has been obUterated from the mentalities of parents and
headmasters of schools, musical progress will begin to
be realised. The first task of educational reformers
should be the education of parents. And yet there
must be many among them who share the ideals and
aspirations of these reformers, and would willingly col-
laborate with them and dream the same dream of the
future. . . .

But, alas, so many men do not dream, and are con-
tent to sleep!

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CHAPTER V

MUSIC AND THE CHILD (1912)

The fundamental qualities of the bom musician — Divers
functions of the ear — Musical education from an early age —
Influence of environment — Nuances of rhythm — A -rhythm and
its cure — Education and Sensibility — When should instru-
mental lessons be commenced? — Study of composition — Emo-
tion and Thought — Pianoforte and Singing a school — Child-
ren should be taught not only to interpret music, but, before
everything, to hear and absorb it — Children's concerts —
Influence of school music lessons on musical progress of
society — New educational ideas.

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CHAPTER V

MUSIC AND THE CHILD (1912)

There are many more musical children in the world
than parents believe. A small child may take no in-
terest in music, not care for singing, march out of time
in following a military band, and absolutely refuse to
take piano lessons, and yet be not wholly lacking in
musical feeling. Musical aptitudes are often deeply
latent in the individual, and, from one cause or another,
may fail to find the means of manifesting themselves —
just as certain springs flow imderground, and are only
brought to the surface after a stubborn pickaxe has
opened up the way. One of the functions of education
should be to develop the musical instinct of children.
But how is this to be awakened at an early age? and
what are its external signs?

To be a complete musician, one requires a good ear,
imagination, intelligence, and temperament — that is,
the faculty of experiencing and commimicating artistic
emotion. As regards the hearing, we cannot do better
than adopt Lionel Dauriac's definition in his Essai
sur Vesprit musical, where he describes a musical ear
as "a faculty of the soul." Certainly the mere recogni-
tion and apprehension of sotmds does not entitle a
person to claim the possession of a good musical ear.
External aural sensations shotild, in addition, create an

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96 Rhythm, Music, and Education

internal consciousness and state of emotion. There are
musicians of marvellously trained ear, who do not love
and respond emotionally to music; others, imperfectly
developed aurally, who are yet real artists, capable
both of interpreting and creating.

Many parents imagine that the mere possession of a
clear and accurate voice implies musical talent. This
is far from being the case. As everyone knows, it is
rhythm that gives meaning and form to juxtapositions
of soimds. A child who can improvise, in a charming
voice, successions of notes, without order or measure,
may be a far inferior musician to one who has no voice
but can improvise satisfactory march-rhythms on a
drum.

It is generally supposed that the mere distinguishing
of the names and relations of notes heard constitutes a
good ear. Now this is a mistake, for the varying pitch
of notes is only one of the qualities of sound. The ear
should be able to distinguish the different degrees of
tonal intensity, of dynamics, of the rapidity or the
slowness of successions of soimd, of timbre, of all that
expressive quality of sotmd we designate as musical
coloiu". It is the possession of this quality, in my
opinion, that augurs best for the musical future of a
child. There is no need to despair of a child of six
who may find a difficulty in reproducing melodies
vocally or on the piano, so long as he is capable of dis-
tinguishing melodies, and of responding to gradations
of sotmd, contrasts of forie and piano, variations of
speed — ^in other words, to musical nuances.

Parents often say: ''It's no good giving our child
music lessons; he's got no voice." Yet, on examina-

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Music and the Child 97

tion, an expert might find that the child in question
was very far from having no voice, but that he was
merely incapable of co-ordinating his vocal system with
the sounds he was asked to imitate. The fault may
lie with his ear, which may be quite sound but is
unpractised.

What is involved in making a mistake at the piano?
Merely the playing of notes not indicated in the score.
Yet musicians with a fine ear may — like Rubenstein —
constantly play wrong notes ; and they remain far better
musicians than the numerous pianists in whom ear and
temperament conflict, although their fingers never fail
them. If a child has no intuition of the conventional
accuracy of harmony, he will usually be incapable of
judging whether his mother is playing right or wrong
chords on the piano. But he should be taught to appre-
ciate the nuances of music, and to judge whether she is
plajdng softly, loudly, in treble or bass, quickly or slowly,
near or far from him, legato or staccato; and she can show
him the difference between a crescendo and a diminu-
endo, by placing him behind a door to be gently opened
or closed while the music is in progress. And when he
listens to a military band, she can point out to him that
each instrument has a different voice, that the big
trombone has a deep intonation like papa, and that the
clarinet speaks like mama, while the flute squeaks like
Aunt Matilda.

What an obvious opportunity is missed by parents,
who must know how children love stories, in not at-
tempting to rouse their interest in music by plajdng
little pieces of a realistic order, illustrative of a story
whose characters consist of personages lending them-

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98 Rhythm, Music, and Education

selves to musical treatment, such as galloping horses,
little mice with their short, quick, movements, chiming
bells, etc. I have foimd children follow with intense
interest the little descriptive pieces of Schiunann, Rei-
necke, Burgmein, Ingdbrecht, D6odat de S6verac,
Pibich, and the like. Long before he knows how to
produce the sounds himself, the child may thus be
taught to listen to music.

And this is perhaps the best way in which a mother,
so long as she is careful not to overdo things — to stop
at the first yawn — may arouse in her child not only an
interest in, but the indispensable love for music. The
important thing, as one cannot repeat too often, is
that the child should learn to feel music, to absorb it,
to give his body and sotil to it ; to listen to it not merely
with his ear, but with his whole being. Aural sensa-
xions require to be completed by muscular sensations —
phenomena of a physiological order produced by the
permeating influence of sotmd vibrations. There are
persons, deaf from birth, who can yet appreciate and
distinguish pieces of music of different styles, by means
of sensations of a tactile nature, by the kinds of in-
ternal resonance, which, according to the rhythms of
the music, vary in intensity and form. The ear is
closely related to the larynx, and there is undoubtedly
a reciprocal influence between the hearing and the
vocal system.

I have known many yoimg people who, on hearing a
sotmd, have experienced a sensation at the back of the
throat. The cultivation of the voice will help to de-
velop the ear, provided, of course, the pupil is made
aware of the connection between the sounds he hears

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Music and the Chfld 99

and the resulting pressure in the larynx. The mere
thinking of a tune arouses in the throat the muscular
movements necessary for its vocal emission. It is there-
fore desirable, in order to develop the child's ear, to
cultivate also his voice.

Environment is another considerable influence. We
know how quickly children can pick up accents. I
knew an English child in London, who spoke both
French and English with a Vaudois accent, his nurse
having come from Vaudois. A governess with a harsh
voice may have a very bad influence on the child's ear.
One cannot be too careftil in seeing that, from the
tenderest age, the child hears only good music. "A
man's education commences at his birth," as Rousseau
observed. "Earliest habits are the strongest," wrote
P6nelon. Rollin relates that Roman children, from
their birth, were disciplined in the purity of their
mother tongue. As Montaigne expressed it, "Our
worst vices date from our infancy, and our strongest
influence throughout life is our nttrse."

In his interesting book entitled, UEducaiion mu-
sicalCy^ Albert Lavignac asserts his conviction that
"many children fail to become musical through their
parents allowing their musical instincts to die of neg-
lect. A father who desired his daughter to become a
dancer wotild carefully watch from her first steps to
see that her legs were straight. Similarly we shotild be
on the look-out for deformities or deficiencies in the
aural system."

It would be so easy to devote a few minutes a day to
setting the child to imitate a note played on the piano,

' Published by Delagrave, 15 Rue Soufflot, PariA.

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100 Rhythm, Music, and Education

or to sound the A on a pitch-pipe or a tuning-fork, and
ask him to find the note of the same sotmd on the piano.
There are numerous similar experiments to whidh one
can and should subject children of an early age. We
cannot repeat too often that musical instinct does not
always emerge of itself, but requires to be brought out
by a training in association of ideas. Twenty years
ago, I wrote some little songs, and set children to punc-
tuate them with bodily movements. I frequently
noticed that children who did not care for music, and
detested singing came to love the songs, through love
of the movements. The two essential elements in music
are rhythm and sound. Often a taste for rhythmic
movement will lead a child, possessing only slight audi-
tive faculties, to appreciate music.

Sensibility is closely allied to sensation. To be a
sensitive musician, it is necessary to appreciate the
nuances, not only of pitch, but of the dynamic energy
and the varying rapidity of the movements. These
nuances must be appreciated not only by the ear but
also by the muscular sense.

Berlioz devotes an interesting chapter to the need for
studying rhythm as part of one's musical education.
He was preaching in the wilderness — more's the pity!
The study of rhythm conduces to develop not only the
instincts for time, symmetry, and balance, but also —
thanks to the training of the nervous system involved —
the sensibilities. However gifted a child may be, in
respect of his aural faculties, he will only become a
good musician if he possesses temperament. In the
words of the proverb, **We may be armed at all points

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Music and the Child loi

like a battle-ship, but we cannot progress without a
boiler."

What makes music expressive? What gives life to
successions of musical sounds? Movement, rhythm.
The nuances of rhythm are perceptible simultaneously
by the aural and muscular senses. In the conventional
music lesson an attempt is made, via the memory, to
give the child a feeling for movement; never an tmder-
standing of movement. This latter should be inculcated
by observation and exercise of the instinct for compari-
son. A feeling for movement can only be acquired (if
it is not possessed instinctively), by means of physical
exercises. How many people notice the imgainly move-
ments of their friends, while they themselves are unable
to move gracefully — though they are quite unaware of
the fact! It is not that their muscles are necessa-
rily intractable; frequently their nervous system is dis-
ordered. The nervous system is an accumulator of
energy that can be trained to expend and recuperate
its potentialities, on normal lines, and thereby assure
the flexibility and force necessary for musical purposes.

A-rhythm is a malady usually caused by the inability
of a man to control himself, from a predominance of
intellect over nervous functioning. "Will not followed
by execution is useless. Will is not enough ; power is the
essential." In Ribot's phrase, "The aim of education
is to transmute the conscious into the unconscious, and
to establish harmony between these two states." The
senses are not adequately provided for in our schools;
that is why so few of our people are artistic. Art is
not a domain accessible only to an Slite. "It is within
reach of all those who are capable of co-ordinating

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102 Rhythm, Music, and Education

their senses, by reference to an ideal of beauty and
harmony."'

Georges Delbruck most rightly insists on the vital-
ising effect of training the senses, and on its influence
on the development of artistic feeling, temperament,
and individuality. Were this training provided by our
schools, our musical standard would, in a very few
years, be considerably elevated. Under present con-
ditions, children can leam to love and tmderstand music
only outside of school hoiu^. The method of teaching
it leaves, in my opinion, much to be desired.

Parents are apt to confuse music with the piano.
One is only a real musician if one plays the piano ! Ask
a person if he is musical, and he will often reply in
embarrassment: **I wish I were. If only my parents
had made me leam the piano! But I love music, and
never miss a concert ! " And yet these persons may be
far better musicians than many reputed pianists;" for,
while some of these may be consummate artists, there
are others who do not really care for, or who care for
only their own music: who, at a concert, can appreciate
only "sttmts," have no discrimination for style or con-
struction, and are neither stirred nor interested by the
most moving works. If the training of their sensibili-
ties had been tmdertaken before they commenced their
pianoforte studies, their appreciation, taste, and tem-
perament would probably have been far more devel-

' Georges Delbruck: "L'^ucation de la dtoiocratie'' (LaRenaissancg
CorUemporaine, lo Rue Oudinot, Paris).

* Vide Chapter III, "The young lady of the Conservatoire and the
Piano," supra, pp. 6i, et seq.

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Music and the ChOd 103

oped. Similarly, if young men or women, after study-
ing the piano without appreciable result, were to leave
it alone for a time, and cultivate general musical
capacities, they would probably acquire the incentive
to continue their pianoforte studies with advantage.
But the dear mammas, with their naive candour, are
convinced that musical development depends exclu-
sively on learning the piano. What a mistake ! Piano-
forte lessons, unless preceded by training of the ear
and by rhythmic movement, frequently damage the
aural and rhythmic faculties. The sense of touch de-
velops, to the detriment of the hearing. The following
experiment was made by a friend of mine, Director of
a conservatoire in a highly musical city. Twelve child-
ren of the same age, never having studied music, and
selected from a large number, as presenting equal and
average musical qualifications and similar hearing
faculties, were divided into two groups of six. One of
these groups confined itself to stud}ring solf^, the
other commenced pianoforte lessons. After a year an
examination was held, which established the fact that
the faculty of distinguishing sotmds had sensibly de-
teriorated in the second group. The solf^e students
were then initiated into the study of the piano. After
a single year's work, they had overtaken their comrades,
who had by then devoted two years to it. This experi-
ment proves that the study of solf^ge, prior to com-
mencing pianoforte lessons, is not a waste of time for
the pupil. Quite the contrary.

It is nothing less than lunacy to set a child to study
an instrument before he has bwn trained to appreciate

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104 Rhythm, Music, and Education

rhythm and distinguish sotmds. Undoubtedly there
are **infant prodigies" to whom this generalisation is
not applicable. But, while these may be pennitted to
strum and improvise ad libitum, it is highly inadvisable
to give them pieces to learn. Too often, the triple
labours of finger exercises, reading, and understanding
music produce a nervous fatigue that persists through-
out their lives.

And what anomalies in pianoforte lessons proper!
Unfortunate girls, without a grain of music in them,
will practise three or four hours a day for six to twelve
years to achieve a certain finger virtuosity that is
kept up only until their marriage, after which their
fingers rapidly resimie their pristine stiffness and in-
flexibility. Lionel Dauriac has well said that * 'marriage
extinguishes the accomplishments of three-quarters of
our daughters. Once they no longer have time to
devote five or six hours a day to martyrdom at the
piano, they renounce music and close their pianos. And
they would close their understanding of music as well,
if their masters had not forgotten ever to open it!"

As for composition, the pupils of most of our col-
leges of music are taught the external forms of musical
expression before they have experienced any feeling
worthy of expression; they are taught harmonies before
they are capable of hearing them inwardly; they are
shown how to write counterpoint in two parts before
they are sufficiently developed to compose a single
melody at all agreeable to the ear. Most teachers of
composition will bear me out when I assert that very
few of their pupils, before embarking on their courses,
have \mdergone this preliminary training in regulating

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Music and the Child 105

excesses and vagaries of temperament, rousing it when
inactive, submitting it to analysis when it tends to
immoderation, detaching it therefrom as a curb to
introspection. Patient and persistent practice in coun-
terpoint is indispensable to a composer, forming the
basis of his musical education; but it should not be
undertaken before he is capable of assimilating its
substance — that is, before his spirit has been saturated
in melody, his natural rhythm has found a medium of
expression, and music has become a part of him — his
whole organism responding in unison with the impres-
sions and emotions that assail it.

It is only by experience, be it remembered, that the
inner ear can be formed and trained. No training can
be undertaken before some sort of control has been
established. In studying drawing, whether landscape
or portrait, the student must be brought into immediate
contact with the object he is to reproduce. The same
applies to music. The atiral sensations conveyed by
the instrument serve both to indicate mistakes and to
suggest the means of rectifying them. Professors of
harmony, who oblige their pupils of inferior hearing
capacity to dispense with the piano, thereby destroy
their instinct for comparison, and make of them mere
mathematicians, intellectuals, who become slaves of
automatic thought and construction, and whose in-
spiration, dependent on the nervous influx produced
by sound-sensations, gradually dies out. The fact of
the matter, as we see it, is this: Musical thought is
the result of a state of emotion, and a musical "score"
may record this emotion. But its expression requires
from time to time to be controlled by sensations. And

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io6 Rhythm, Music, and Education

it is impossible, in an art so sensuous as music, that the
memory of harmonies can as eflEectively recall the
original emotions as the actual experience of the aural
sensations. In the same way, a painter, imagining a
landscape or portrait, and proceeding to depict it with-
out a model, is far more liable to lose touch with Nature
than he who pictorially expresses his emotion while
in immediate contact with Nature or a human physio-
gnomy. Did not Courbet declare that, before painting,
it was necessary to teach the eye to observe Nature?
What a pity that tuition in the colleges of music the
world over tends always to produce virtuosos instead
of good amateurs! And what a happy idea it was of
M. Femand Bartholini, fotmder of the Conservatoire
of Geneva, to devote that establishment exclusively to
the education of amateurs, in order to raise the standard
of the public and spread the love and appreciation of
music in home and concert-hall ! If the child's musical
education followed the dictates of common sense, it
would no longer be necessary for composers to record
on paper all the nuances to be followed in execution.
The pianist would shade and phrase the music without
the need for indications. Poets do not denote the man-
ner in which their verses should be shaded, and music
is only a language. The laws of musical expression
originate in the human organism, bom of the observa-
tion of the natural course of our physiological life.
Does this not point to the necessity for "musicalising"
the student generally before confining him to instru-
mental studies? So musicalised, the student will make
far more rapid progress at his instnmient. Can we not
wait till a ghilcj is $even or eight before attempting to

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Music and the Child 107

teach him the piano or violin? In that case we might
commence his musical training, on simple and natural
lines, from the age of five or six.

Par be it from me to set myself against the piano
and its tuition ! I hold that the piano is the most com-
plete of all instruments, as well as the most useful,
since it gives an idea of harmony, of polyphony, and
even of orchestral tone. But pianoforte teachers will
themselves agree with me that it is too much to expect
them to teach simultaneously the technique of the in-
strument and the first elements of music' Parents
should therefore refuse to entrust their children to
them until they have first taken a course in elementary
music. And tJiis course, tending by human means to
instil a love for music, and at the same time to bring
its pursuit within reach, should be provided by our
schools.

How are we to convince those who administer our
national schools — and when will parents demand of
them — that music should form an organic part of
school life? Singing at school should be a form of ex-
ultation, as well as a means of collective discipline,
for, as Guizot affirmed, "music cultivates the soul
and thus forms part of the education of a people."
And Luther wrote: "One cannot doubt but that
music contains the germ of all the virtues, and I can
only compare with sticks or stones those whom it
leaves cold. Our youth should be reared in the con-

I This point of view has already been expressed; but one must not be
afraid of repetitions where it is a case of expounding an idea that is
seldom practised, and on the practice of whidi, nevertheless, depends
any real reform in musical education.

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io8 Rhythm, Music, and Education

stant practice of this divine art.*' And Shakespeare
exclaimed:

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds.
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted !

Our schools do not give music suflBcient prominence
or provide adequate time for practice. Those who
suggest that a short daily singing lesson be included in
the curriculum, are met with the emphatic reply:
**Out of the question! Every master of a special sub-
ject— mathematics, geography, languages — is clam-
ouring for extra time. ... If one submitted to all
their claims, twelve hoiu^ a day would not suflSce to
include all the branches of learning." On the surface
this reasoning appears sound, but it is based on a false
assumption. Actually, music, like gymnastics, is pri-
marily not a branch of learning, but a branch of educa-
tion.' The school, before everything else, should aim
at moulding the physical and psychic personality of
the child; at preparing him for life. If we postponed
the study of Roman history till we had reached 20,
our general development would not be affected. But
to commence our gymnastic exercises and music prac-
tice at an adult age would be to lose most of the benefits
they should provide. Gjnnnastics mean health ; music

>A number of headmasters oppose any reform in singing-lessons
because they hold singing to be a secondary branch. This fallacy
should be strenuously combated.

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Music and the Chfld 109

means harmony and joy. Each of them provides a refuge
and a reaction from overwork. To make students sing
daily, if only for a quarter of an hour, would be analo-
gous to setting them every day, between each lesson,
even, a few physical exercises. The singing of ballads
and songs would thus become a natural practice with
schoolchildren, while singing and music lessons formed
part of the school curriculum. These should be devoted
to the study of musical science, and should be in pro-
portion to the other branches of learning. They should
inculcate a knowledge not of singing, but of music
and how to listen to it.

There is something prof otmdly ludicrous in the fact
that, while musical instinct is based on the experience
of the ear, a child is taught exclusively to play and
sing, never to hear and listen. How strange that a
master should never think of saying, "Now keep quiet
and listen for a minute; I am going to play you a min-
uet of Haydn's or a rondo by Clementi and you shall
tell me what you think of it." To my mind, musical
education should be entirely based on hearing, or, at
any rate, on the perception of musical phenomena: the
ear gradually accustoming itself to grasp the relations
between notes, keys, and chords, and the whole body,
by means of special exercises, initiating itself into
the appreciation of rhythmic, dsmamic, and agogic
nuances of music. Think of the poor mites driven
on to the platform the moment they can play a little
berceuse^ to show off their finger training before an
audience of parents, and even, if you please, musical
critics! It does not occur to anybody that it is these

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no Rhythm, Music, and Exlucation

very children who ought to be listening to music ! Con-
certs for children, such as are held in Germany and
England, are tmknown in Switzerland; but at least our
teachers might make use of the lessons themselves for
providing their pupils with the pleasure of hearing
good music, combined with the opportunity of forming
tastes and developing critical faculties. One of the
advantages of singing is that it enables the child to
share with his parents the benefits of school training.
Every song a child brings with him from school en-
riches, rejuvenates, ennobles, elevates, brightens, unites,
and vitalises the family life. Just as the circle formed
by a pebble dropped into water widens and spreads by
the elastic action of rhythm ; so the folk-song introduced
by the child into his family circle, extends its influence,
breaking through the portals of the home, and poten-
tially refining a whole district with the joy of its rhythm
and the lesson of its poesy.

A child who forms a taste for singing and good music
will retain it all his life. Our male choirs for the most
part confine themselves to an inartistic repertoire: too
many of our soldiers are content with comic songs: the
men in our mixed choral societies have great diflBculty
in reading music: the singing in certain churches is de-
plorably bad: the cantor is out of touch with the organ
— ^the female voices with the cantor, the male voices
with the female — and the organ, obliged to wait at the
end of a verse for the men to catch it up, in spite of all
its anxiety to lead the singing, begins the new verse itself
behind the rest. Our musicians are reduced to lament-
ing that our people have not the instinct for music;
they will go to a concert only to hear a popular singer's

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Music and the Child i"

"top notes/' never to an organ recital, or to hear
chamber music. . . . And yet Herbert Spencer, the
pioneer psychologist in education, who, in 1849, com-
plained that English girls received no corporal training
in their schools, achieved such wonders by his influence
that those same girls, twenty years later, had become
the premier sportswomen of the world! And he could
write in i860 that a scientific education might train
chidren not only to appreciate art, but to feel the need
for it, and that it was capable in fifty years of revolu-
tionising the mentality of a whole people!

Undoubtedly a time will come when the teaching of
music will form an organic part of the life of the school.
Once the idea is comprehended, its application will
remain only a matter of days. And will not the day
when all cotmtries lay down their arms provide an
occasion for establishing in Geneva — at the Rousseau
Institute, for example — a centre of educational experi-
ments from which every country may derive benefit?
Progress is in the air, new ideas fly from country to
country. M. Ed. Clapardde is inaugurating an ingen-
ious system at once natural and scientific; schools on
new lines are being founded and developed in all parts
of Switzerland. Dr. Rollier, Dr. Cramer, and many
others, are making a success of the "sun cure." The
day is approaching, I am convinced, when the music
cure will attain recognition. On that day our children
will have acquired a new vital impulse. If our grand-
parents had received the musical education I am advo-
cating, we ourselves would better love and appreciate
music. Let us not deny our descendants these added
musical faculties, this more complete artistic joy!

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112 Rhythm, Music, and Education

Through innumerable centuries men march in file before
time, and the burden of life is passed from hand to
hand, from generation to generation; and the will of
each man may decide whether that burden shall become
Ughter or heavier, and it is the duty of each one of us
to see that it becomes lighter. When our mothers
realise the part they play, voluntarily or involtmtarily,
in the evolution of humanity, they will grasp the needs
of education and help to emancipate our children from
the conventions that restrict their intellectual and
physical development.

Parents should never lose sight of the fact that our
bodies and souls are the product of fabulous efforts of
development and progress through thousands of cen-
turies, and that the future depends on us, as we depend
on the past. It is their duty to care for the htunanity
of to-morrow, to prepare the way for future progress,
and to assure for their descendants nobler instincts,
more elevated aspirations, and a completer happiness:
there is no higher duty than to sow the good seed and
prepare the harvest of joy for others.

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CHAPTER VI

RHYTHMIC MOVEMENT, SOLFEGE, AND
IMPROVISATION (1914)

Sound, rhythm, and dynamics — Harmony of imagincUwe
and practical faculties — Absolute music and corporal experi-
ence— The psychic force of rhythm — The study of movement
awakens the whole being — The study of solfige awakens the
sense of hearing {pitch, realisation of keys, and tone-quality) —
The study of improvisation at the piano externalises concept
tions of rhythm and solfige, and strengthens the sense of touch —
Table of exercises in rhythmic movement — Table of exercises
in solfige — Table of exercises in improvisation — Intimate
connection between these tables.

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CHAPTER VI

RHYTHMIC MOVEBIENT, SOLF^GE, AND IMPROVISATION

(1914)

Ear training alone will not make a child love and ap-
preciate music; the most potent element in music, and
the nearest related to life, is rhythmic movement.

Rhjrthm, like dynamics, depends entirely on move-
ment, and finds its nearest prototype in otu* muscular
system.' All the nuances of time — allegro, andante,
accelerando, ritenuto — all the nuances of energy, forte,
piano, crescendo, diminuendo — can be "realised" by
our bodies, and the acuteness of our musical feeling
wilj depend on the acuteness of our bodily sensations.

A special gymnastic system, habituating muscles to
contract and relax, and corporal lines to widen and
shrink in time and space, should supplement metrical
feeling and instinct for rhjrthm. This system of gym-
nastics must be adaptable to the most divergent tem-
peraments; for no two individuals, however well
endowed intellectually and physically, will react in
quite the same way — one following the instructions more
slowly, another more quickly. Some succeed in execut-
ing a particular exercise in a given time, but fail, on a
sudden command, to commence a new exercise, and
continue the first in spite of their anxiety to interrupt

> See Chap. IV, pp. 79, 8a

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ii6 Rhythm, Music, and Education

it. Others, having made a good beginning, suddenly
hesitate, and finish in confusion what was begtrn with
full confidence and clarity.

The fact is, that for the precise physical execution of
a rhythm, it is not enough to have grasped it intellec-
tually and to possess a muscular system capable of
interpreting it; in addition, and before all else, com-
munications should be established between the mind
that conceives and analyses, and the body that executes.

These communications depend on the f imctioning of
the nervous system. It is rare, in these days, to find a
person whose mental and bodily processes are perfectly
harmonised. Relations between the imaginative and
executive faculties are too often compromised by a lack
of freedom in the nerve ciurents, owing to the re-
sistance of certain muscles, produced by the tardy
transmission of mental orders for their contraction or re-
laxation. The consciousness of a persistent resistance
in the muscular system, or a disorder in the nervous
system, produces mental confusion, lack of confidence
in one's powers, and general "nervyness." This con-
dition, in its turn, produces lack of concentration. The
brain finds itself a prey to incessant solicitude, which
prevents it from fimctioning clearly, and devoting the
necessary time and repose to the control of the whole
organism and the analysis of the orders to be issued
for execution.

The better our lives are regulated, the freer we be-
come in every way. The more words included in our
vocabulary, the more our thought is enriched. The
more automatism possessed by our body, the more otu*
soul will rise abpye m^teri^l things. Constant concern

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Rhythm, Solf^ge, Improvisation n?

with otir bodies deprives us of a large measiire of free-
dom of spirit. Are not most men slaves of their corpo-
ral functions, prisoners of matter? And, contrary to
the popular idea, the premature development of in-
tellect, and overspedalised studies, far from clarifying
the mind, are apt to disturb and imbalance it. What
is known as "absolute" music is music completely
demateriaUsed — not directly addressed to our sensorial
faculties, but which seeks to awaken emotion by means
of developments and combinations of a metaphysical
order. This transcendent form of art can only be
appreciated by those who have triumphed over their
bodily resistances, and yet this attainment may in-
volve primary physical means. So long as the body has
not been perfectly developed, there must be constant
friction between sensations and feelings, and this in-
cessant conflict between body and spirit will prohibit
the necessary spiritualisation of matter. Music can
never be rendered entirely pure imtil the body has been
purified, and this can only be accomplished by seeing
oneself clearly and discerning one's impurities.

One of the first results of exercises designed, on the
one hand, to create automatisms and to assure the ef-
fective working of the muscular system, and, on the
other, to establish clear and rapid commimication be-
tween the two poles of our being and encourage the
expansion of our natural rhythms — one of the first
results of these exercises is to teach the child to know
and control himself, and, as it were, take possession of
his personality. Initiated into the marvellous mechan-
ism of this body of ours, provided for consecration as a
worthy dwelling-place for the soul — confident of achiev-

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ii8 Rhythm, Music, and Education

ing without effort or preoccupation any movement
suggested by others or by himself, — ^the child will feel
rising and growing in him the will to make full use of
the abundant forces in his potential control. His im-
agination will likewise develop, inasmuch as his spirit,
freed from all constraint and physical disquietude, can
give free rein to his fantasy.

Functioning develops the organ, and the conscious-
ness of organic fimctioning develops thought. And as
the child feels himself delivered of all physical embar-
rassment, and mental obsession of an inferior order, joy
will come to birth in him. This joy is a new factor in
ethical progress, a new stimulus to will-power.

The aim of all exercises in eurhythmies is to strength-
en the power of concentration, to accustom the body
to hold itself, as it were, at high pressure in readiness
to execute orders from the brain, to connect the con-
scious with the sub-conscious, and to augment the sub-
conscious faculties with the fruits of a special culture
designed for that purpose. In addition, these exercises
tend to create more niunerous habitual motions and
new reflexes, to obtain the maximum effect by a mini-
mum of effort, and so to purify the spirit, strengthen
the will-power, and install order and clarity in the
organism.

The whole method is based on the principle that
theory should /9/fote; practice, that children should not
be taught rules until they have had experience of the
facts which have given rise to them, and that the first
thing to be taught a child is the use of all his faculties.
Only subsequently should he be made acquainted with
the opinions and deductions of others. Before sowing

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Rhythm, Solfege, Improvisation 119

the seed, you must prepare your soU. In respect of
music, especially, the present practice is to put an im-
plement in the hands of children, who have no idea
what to do with it. We have frequently deplored the
fact that they are taught the piano before they have
shown any musical propensities,' before they can hear
soimds or appreciate rhythms, before their feeling for
sounds and rhjrthmic movement is developed — before
their whole being vibrates in response to artistic
emotions.

The aim of eurhythmies is to enable pupils at the
end of their course, to say, not *'I know," but *'I have
experienced," and so create in them the desire to ex-
press themselves; for the deep impression of an emo-
tion inspires a longing to communicate it, to the extent
of one's powers, to others. The more we have of life,
the more we are able to diffuse life about it. "Receive
and givel" is the golden rule of humanity; and if the
whole system of rhythmic training is based on music,
it is because music is a tremendous psychic force: a
product of our creative and expressive ftmctions that,
by its power of stimulating and disciplining, is able to
regulate all our vital ftmctions.

The actual practice of individual rhjrthms (as also
the method adopted for the purpose) is more than a pe-
dagogic system. Rhythm is a force analogous to elec-
tricity and the great chemical and physicai elements,
— an energy, an agent — ^radio-active, radio-creative —
conducing to self-knowledge and to a consciousness
not only of our powers, but of those of others, of hu-
manity itself. It directs us to the unplumbed depths

> See Chapter III, p. 13, and Chapter V, p. 95.

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120 Rhythm, Music, and Education

of our being. It reveals to us secrets of the eternal
mystery that has ruled the lives of men throughout the
ages; it imprints on our minds a primitive reUgious
character that elevates them, and brings before us
past, present, and future. Thus it seems to me to be
destined — ^in a far distant future, when suflBcient high-
minded people can collaborate for the piupose — to
create more intimate relations between mental and
nervous processes, and to imite all the vital forces of the
individual. But confining myself to my r61e of musical
pedagogue, I can here only insist on the tremendous
part played by rhythm in the formation of musical
individuality, and indicate the nature and scope of the
exercises invented up to the present, and their dose
connection with those relating to the subjects of ele-
mentary musical training next in order of importance,
namely, those of the hearing faculties (solf^ge) and of
the capacity of spontaneous creation (improvisation).

THE STUDY OF RHYTHMIC MOVEMENT AWAKENS THE
WHOLE ORGANISM

The study of rhythm awakens:

I. Feeling for bodily 2. Aural perception of

rhythm — rhythm —

and

(i) develops, by means of a (2) develops, by means of

special training of the mus- a special system of aural

cular system and nerve training, the capacity for

centres, thecapacity for per- perceiving and expressing

ceiving and expressing nu- nuances of force and time-

ances of force and elasticity diu-ation of sounds, sponta-

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Rhythm, Solf^ge, Improvisation 121

in time and space — ^like- neous and deliberate appre-

wise concentration in the dation of sounds — ^likewise

analysis, and spontaneity concentration and sponta-

in the execution, of rhythm- neity in their analysis and

ic movements, enabling vocai expression, enabling

pupils to read, mark, and pupils to read, mark,

finally create rhythm (both and finally create soimd

mentally and physically). rhythms (both mentally

and physically).

The study of soLPfecE awakens:

the sense of pitch and tone-relations and the faculty of dis-
tinguishing tone-qualities.

It teaches the pupil to hear, and to reproduce men-
tally, melodies in all keys (single and simultaneous), and
every kind and combination of harmony; to read and
improvise vocally; to write down and use the material
for constructing music himself.

The study of pianoforte improvisation

combines the principles of rhythm and solfdge, with a
view to their musical extemalisation, by means of touch ;
awakens the motor-tactile consciousness, and teaches
pupils to interpret on the piano musical thoughts of
a melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic nature.

The following exercises are designed to train, on these
principles, body, ear, and mind.

Rhythmic Movement

I. Exercises in Muscular Relaxation and Breathing,
— ^The pupil is trained to reduce to a minimtun the

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122 Rhythm, Music, and Education

muscular activity of each limb, then gradually to apply
its powers. Lying on his back, he relaxes his whole
body and concentrates his attention on breathing, in
all its processes; then on the contraction of a single
limb. He is then taught to contract simultaneously
two or more limbs, or to combine the contraction of one
limb with the relaxation of another. This enables him
to note its muscular resistances, and to eliminate those
that serve no purpose. Exercises in breathing may be
associated with those of innervation, and applied to all
positions.

2. Metrical Division and Accentuaiion. — ^The pupil
is trained to distinguish different times by marching
the beats and accentuating the first beat of each bar
with a stamp of the foot. Gestures with the arm ac-
company each step, and emphasise the first beat by
means of a complete muscular contraction. On the
weak beats, steps and gestures should be executed with
a minimum of muscular effort. Then, on a sudden
command, at the word **hopp," the pupil must con-
trive to prevent his arm from contracting, or his foot
from stamping. Or, again, the word **hopp" may be
made to convey the order to stamp suddenly or con-
tract the arm on a different beat, or to substitute a
leg movement for an arm movement. It is extremely
difficult to separate leg from arm movements, and it
is only by dint of repeated exercises that, eventually,
distinct automatisms are created.

3. Metrical Memorisation. — ^After "hopps" have in-
dicated various distinct movements; the pupil has to

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Rhythm, Solfdge, Improvisation 123

recall these movements, and in the order in which they
were executed. These exercises thus constitute a form
of analysis, and conscious and deliberate application,
of sub-conscious movements. The pupil must have exe-
cuted each movement before he explains and notes it.

4. Rapid Conception of Bar-time by the Eye and Ear.
— Once the pupil can execute movements in a certain
order and substitute, at the word "hopp," one move-
ment for another, he becomes capable of dispensing
with definite commands. These are replaced by aural
and visual symbols, representing their sensations.
Series of bars are played to the pupil, whose ear dic-
tates appropriate movements; or, again, the sight of
the movements executed by others, or noted on the
blackboard, calls for their spontaneous expression by
direct imitation.

5. Conception of Rhythms by Muscular Sense. — ^The
body possesses a certain number of natural rhythms,
which manifest themselves in a definite time and
with a certain degree of energy, according to tem-
perament. The perception of the degrees of muscular
tension is accompanied by that of the variations of
time-duration, and strengthened by the sensation of
greater or smaller amplitude of the movements in space.
This amplitude depends on the greater or lesser degree
of resistance of the conflicting muscles. By means
of a whole series of graduated exercises, the pupil is
trained to adapt different musctdar processes for short
and long durations respectively, to estimate durations
according to the sensations of tension and extension of
muscles, of opening and closing of limbs in space, to co-

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124 Rhythm, Music, and Education

ordinate the different dynamic forces of the body, and
to apply the measure of space to the control of the
duration and intensity of muscular contractions. The
master should be careful to see that the co-ordination
of movements does not rob them of their spontaneity.

6. Development of Spontaneous Will-power and Facul-
ties of Inhibition, — Musicalrhythmconsistsof movements
and repressions of movements. Musicians with irregu-
lar rhjrthms are those whose muscles are too slow or too
quick in responding to mental orders, who lose time in sub-
stituting one movement for another, or who cannot check
themselves in time, or else check themselves too hastily,
ignoring the art of preparing repressions of movement.
Special exercises will enable the pupil to check move-
ments suddenly or by degrees, to change a forward for
a backward or sideward step, and vice versa; or to
effect a jump, at command, without breaking the time,
and right himself with a minimum of effort, again
without breaking the time.

7. Exercises in Concentration. Creation of Mental
Hearing of Rhythms. — The practice of bodily movements
awakens images in the mind. The stronger the muscular
sensations, the clearer and more precise the images, and
thereby the more metrical and rhythmic feeling is de-
veloped ; for feeling is bom of sensation. The pupil who is
able to march in time, and according to certain rhythms,
has only to close his eyes to imagine himself continuing
to march metrically and rhythmically. He continues
the movement in thought. If his movements are slack,
his imaginative representations of them will likewise

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Rhythm, Solfege, Improvisation 125

be slack. The precision and regtilated dynamic force
of musctilar automatisms are a guarantee of the pre-
cision of thought-automatisms, and the regular devel-
opment of imaginative faculties.

The study of repressions of steps prepares us for rests
in music. These, if devoid of movement, are by no means
devoid of life. The study of periods intercepted by
rests teaches the pupil the laws of musical phrasing.

8. Exercises in Corporal Balance, and to Produce Con-
tinuity of Movement. — Ease of movement depends on
balance. The conception of movements extending over
long beats is fortified by stability of attitude, and the
assurance of continuity in the movements. This continu-
ity should be capable of operating in all degrees of mus-
cular energy, and of being interrupted at will. The clear
perception of continuity and interruption assiu*es that
of the balance of rhythmic bars and the conception of
their divers processes of construction, all of which relate
to the science of opposition and contrast.

9. Exercises for the Acquisition of Numerous Automa-
tisms, and their Combination and Alternation with Actions
of Spontaneous Volition. — Muscular actions, after con-
stant repetition, pass outside the control of the brain.
New reflexes can be created, and the time lost between
the conception and realisation of the movement reduced
to a strict minimum. The cultivation of automatisms
should be eflEected in all nuances of tempo. Conformity
with these nuances depends on the perception of the
degrees of muscular energy necessary for eflEecting the
movements. Automatisms should be capable of replace-

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126 Rhythm, Music, and Education

ment by others without effort; they may be combined
and harmonised over different parts of the body. The
pupil should also learn to combine automatisms of his
limbs with those of speech and song. The laws gov-
erning the natural rhythmidsation of verbal rhythms
are similar to those relating to the balance of sotmd
rhjrthms, whether vocal or instrumental.

10. Realisation of Musical Note-values. — Notes of
long dturation are formed by the adding together of
notes of short duration: this is the Greek conception
of rhjrthm. The pupil trained to express a crotchet by
means of a step forward, will divide up longer notes
by movements made while in that position. A minim
will be interpreted by a step forward, followed by a
knee-bend of the body, etc. When the pupil has ac-
customed himself to these various movements indi-
cating divisions, it will suffice for him to execute them
mentally and to take his step forward by a movement
of uninterrupted progression. This will maintain the
exact duration necessary, for he will be mentally mak-
ing these divisions.

1 1 . Division of Beats. — Exercises in the dividing of
notes of long dturation are resumed, but by an inverted
process (the modem conception of duration) . Each crot-
chet should, at command, be subdivided into two {duo-
lets), three {triolets), or fotu* (guadriolets) shorter steps,
etc. This division may naturally be facilitated by a mas-
tery of bodily balance and the means of transferring the
weight of the body; by a diminution of the activity of
constraining muscles, and by the perception of the

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Rhythm, Solfege, Improvisation 127

rdations between space and time. For the execution
of syncopation by anticipation, the step that has to be
made at a particular moment and in a certain time is
replaced by a shorter step effected in half the time,
the second half of the time being occupied by a
knee-bend. For the execution of retarded syncopation
the step is prolonged half the time, and the movement
forward replaced by a bending. This is the most
difficult exercise of the course. The most musically
gifted people can execute it with ease only after some
months of practice. Once the student can perform it
without trouble, he is recognised as having attained
an elementary flexibility sufficient for the acquisition
of a feeling for expressive accent {accent pathStigue).
Children usually have less trouble in acquiring this
flexibility than adults.

12. Immediate Realisation by the Body of Musical
Rhythm. — ^This is a question of the spontaneous repre-
sentation of musical time- values and degrees of force by
muscular and respiratory actions, transposing sound-
rhjrthms into plastic rhythms. The exactitude and
promptitude of the execution depend on the utilisation of
acquired bodily automatisms, and on the development of
the faculties of psychic concentration. The mind has no
time to record all the elements of the musical rhythms:
the body expresses them before the brain has even a
clear idea of them. This is a phenomenon identical
with that of verbal expression. A word once heard is
repeated without analysing its formation. It is only
after hearing it in thought that all the letters forming
it can be transcribed.

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128 Rhythm, Music, and Education

Once the corporal expression of musical rhythms has
become comparatively easy, one may develop the stu-
dent's powers of concentration by setting him, while
executing a rhythm already heard, to listen to a second:
one automatism being in operation while another is
preparing; the body in the past, the mind intent on
the future.

13. Exercises in the Dissociation of Movements, —
These are exercises preparatory to the execution of dy-
namic nuances. Just as, at the piano, one hand may
play forte to the other's piano, so the plastic expression
of vitalised musical rhythms demands conflicting nu-
ances of muscular innervation in different limbs. Special
exercises enable the student to contract a certain muscle
in one arm, while the same muscle in the other arm
remains decontracted. Other exercises show him how
time may be subdivided in one way by one limb, in
another by a different one — e.g., by the execution in a
given time of three equal movements with the feet and
two, four, or five with the arms. Even more than the
others, these exercises contribute to the development
of concentration.

14. Interruptions and Repressions of Movements. —
Balance and ptmctuation of bars and phrases of "cor-
poral speech," according to the laws of musical phrasing
— ^Antitheses and contrasts — Study of anacrusis — ^The
different ways of breathing — The different ways of
checking and interrupting steps and gestures.

15. Double and Triple Speed and Slowness of Move-
ments.— These exercises constitute a bodily preparation

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W9^^

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Rhythm, Solf^ge, Improvisation 129

for the musical processes of developing a theme known as
' 'augmentation" and * * diminution. * ' It may be noticed
that, in their fugues, composers usually confine them-
selves to doubling or quadrupling the speed or slowness
of their theme. A new element in rhythmic develop-
ment is constituted by trebly augmenting or diminish-
ing the speed of a binary rhjrthm.

16 and 17. Plastic Counterpoint and Polyrhythm. —
These exercises are simple transpositions in the cor-
poral sphere of current exercises of musical technique.
The advantage of these transpositions is that they
accustom the organism to experience simultaneously im-
pressions of various kinds. One can imagine coimter-
points of all kinds. The interesting and useful thing
is to experience — live — them organically. Polyrhythm is
facilitated by the cultivation of automatisms. An arm
will execute a rhythm automatically, while the mind
regulates the execution of a second rhythm by another
limb.

18. '* Pathetic'' AccenttuUion — Dynamic and Agogic
Nuances {Musical Expression). — All the preceding ex-
ercises aim at developing feeling for time and rhythm.
The following exercises tend to awaken the student's
temperament, and to cause his body to vibrate in tmison
with music. They **place" the different degrees of am-
plitude of movements, the crescendi and decrescendi of
innervation, teaching the body to pass rapidly from one
expressive nuance to another, seeking to arouse the per-
sonal music of different individualities, and to establish
lines of rapid communication between the aural and

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130 Rhythm, Music, and Education

motor systems by an attempt to perfect the harmoni-
sation of the nervous system, trained to unmediate
activity or passivity, as occasion demands. In short,
they endeavour to co-ordinate external music with that
within each of us, and which is only the echo of our indi-
vidual rhythms, our sorrows and joys, our desires and
powers.

19. Exercises in Notation 0} Rhythms. — ^The stu-
dent is trained to record a rhjrthm he hears or sees
executed.

20. Exercises in Improvisation {Cultivation of Imagi-
native Faculties). — The student, upon command, has to
improvise a series of bars in 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 time, etc.,
or to invent rhythms, utilising given elements, with or
without anacrusis, with pathetic accentuation, rests,
syncopations, etc., in phrases and sentences; likewise
combined rhythms.

21. Conducting Rhythms {Rapid Communication to
Others — Soloists or Groups — of Individual Sensations and
Feelings). — Being given a rhjrthm that the students
know by heart, a student has to conduct a performance
of it by indicating in expressive gestures the agogic or
djmamic nuances.

22. Execution of Rhythms by Several Groups of Pupils
{Initiation into Musical Phrasing). — ^Each rhythm of a
musical phrase is expressed by a group of students, the
ensemble of the groups punctuating the different episodes
of the complete work.

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Rhythm, Solf6ge, Improvisation 131

It must be understood that these exercises do not
profess to constitute the whole artistic training of the
student, but they must, in due course, inevitably de-
velop his self-knowledge; — ^revealing to him his nimier-
ous motor faculties, and augmenting the sum of his
vital sensations. Art cannot dispense with knowledge
of life. Only by familiarising the student with life
can we develop in him a love for art and the desire to
pursue it.

Aural Training (SoLFfecE)

After a year's rhjrthmic training, the student passes
into the soK ^e class. He will continue the above series
of exercises, the master adapting them to the needs of
a musical voice and ear. After developing the student's
mental hearing and physical expression of rhythms, he
will proceed to train his power of hearing, realising,
and creating musical sounds in rhythm.

Appucation of ExERasES IN Rhythmic Movement
TO THE Study of Solf^e

I. Contraction and Decontraction of the Muscles of the
Neck, and the Breathing Muscles. Rhythmical Gymruis-
tics for the Lungs. — The study of diflEerent methods of
vocal attack, and the enimciation of consonants. Con-
flicting movements of arms, shoulders, and diaphragm.
Combination of vocal attack with the corresponding
attack in beginning to march. Distinguishing divers
nuances of intensity of sounds. Connection between
breathing and vocal emission. Study of vocal registers.

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132 Rhythm, Music, and Education

2. Metrical Division and Accentuation. — DiflFerentia-
tion of bars by means of vocal and labial accentuation.
Attacking sound at a definite moment at or without the
command. Rapid substitution of a corporal movement
for an attack of sound — of an attack on a consonant for
one on a vowel.

3. Metrical Memorisation. — The master signifies by
"hopps" a series of attacks of sound regularly measured
and accentuated. The student memorises their number
and accentuation, and repeats them.

4. Rapid Conception of Time by the Eye and Ear. —
Study of musical sjmibols, stave, and clefs. Metrical
expression by breathing movements, or vocal sounds,
of series of meastu-ed notes written on the blackboard
or sung by the master.

5. Perception of the Pitch {of Sounds Sung) by Means
of Dynamic Muscular Sense. — ^The student learns to
differentiate vocal sotmds, from the sensation produced
by the varying degrees of tension of the vocal chords,
and according to the localisation of sound vibrations.
His hand, laid on his chest, neck, jaw, nose, or brow,
enables him, by means of the different forms of reso-
nance of vibrations, to realise the pitch of the notes
emitted. Study of the relations between the intensity
and pitch of sound. Study of major and minor keys.
Recognition and imitation of selected notes in the scale.
Divers modes of setting a series of notes to rhythm.
Reading melodies.

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Rhythm, Solf^ge, Improvisation i33

6. Application to the Voice of Exercises in Spontane-
ous WiU and Inhibition. — Substitution, to order, in a
melodic rhythm, of the voice for bodily movements,
and vice versa. Spontaneous accentuation and punctu-
ation at signs from the master. Sudden checks and
restunption of the song at other signs.

7. Exercises in Concentration. Creation of Mental
Hearing of Sounds. — The student sings a melody or a
scale. At the word "hopp,*' he ceases singing and con-
tinues the melody or scale in thought. Aural perception
of the harmonics of a sound. Distinguishing the tone
of a particular voice (from a medley of others singing
or talking, etc.

8. Association of Continuous Bodily Movements with
Sustained Vocal Sounds. Their Combination with In-
terrupted Movements.

9. Exercises in the A cguisition of Vocal A utomcUisms,
and their Combinations and Alternations with Vocal
Expressions of Spontaneous Will. — ^The student sings a
scale according to a certain rhythm. At the word
**hopp," he continues the scale on another rhjrthm.
... Or he may, after singing a series of thirds or
fourths, etc., sing another interval at command. . . .
Or again, while singing the scale, he may have to jtunp
to one or other of the notes at a sign from the master,
etc.

10. II, and 12. Application of Rhythmic Exercises to
Vocal ** Realisation.'* — Chains of rhythms, i.e., imita-

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134 Rhythm, Music, and Education

tion in canon, bar by bar, of a melody sting by the
master. . . . Study of rests.

13. Exercises in Dissociation. —

The student sings Jf while the body makes movements pp

II II pp .1 l« M g

" " ff ^lile one limb moves < and another >

«i II pp ** " > " <

" <> " " ff " pp

" '* 3 notes while the anns or feet execute 2, 4,

or 5 movements, and vice versa, etc.

14. Study of Rests and Phrasing. — ^Anacrusis — Rests
occupied by mental singing — Sentences and phrases
— Law of contrasts and antitheses — Contrapuntal
phrasing.

15. Double and Triple Speed and Slowness of Move-
ments. — ^The student, while singing a melody, must, at
the command **hopp," effect the double speed or slow-
ness of a bar or beat. The arms beating the measure
continue their movements in the original tempo. Com-
binations and contrasts of double or triple speed, or
slowness of sound, with that of limbs.

16 and 17. Plastic Polyrhythm and Counterpoint. —
The student will sing a rhythm while marching only
the second half of each note- value, or vice versa. He
will learn to sing a melody while executing a different
rhythm by means of bodily movements. He may exe-
cute a canon: singing the first part, clapping his hands
for the second and marching the third. He will listen
to a two-part rhjrthm in the same time and proceed to

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Rhythm, Solf^e, Improvisation 135

sing first the higher, then the lower part. He will
listen to a succession of chords, and reproduce each
vocal line, one after the other, etc.

18. Emotional Accentuation — Dynamic and Agogic
Nuances {Musical Expression). — ^The student is trained
to accentuate the important notes of a rhythm, to ac-
celerate or retard, effect crescendi or decrescendi, — ^first
by instinct, then by analjrsis. Study of the relations
between the pitch and accentuation of sounds.'

19. Exercises in Notation of Melodies, Polyphonies,
and Harmonic Successions.

20. Exercises in Vocal Improvisation. — The student
sings a melody upon a given rhjrthm, or improvises
rhythms upon successions of notes of equal duration.

21 and 22. Conducting of Rhythms. — The student
learns a melody by heart, then conducts it before a
group of students, who interpret it according to his in-
dications. The same for melodies in several parts.

As will be seen, all these exercises in solf^ge corre-
spond, number for number, with those in rhythmic
movement. The student will also learn to distinguish
keys, according to the method described in my Essay
in the Reform of Musical Education (pp. 8 et seq.),
and applied in the three voliunes on SolE^ge already
referred to. He may then commence the study of

> See the rules of phrasing and accentuation in the 3 vols, entitled
Les Gammer et les TonalitSs (Jobin ^ Qe, Publishers, Lausanne),

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136 Rhythm, Music, and Education

harmony. Control of the progressions is assured by
his feeling for movement, faculties of concentration,
hearing, and listening (cultivated by his rh3rthmic train-
ing), and sense of muscular force regulating the ac-
curacy of the voice. Before transcribing successions of
chords, he will feel them resonate within him. Appre-
ciating the connection between melody and movement,
there will remain the co-ordination of movement, melo-
dy, and harmony. He will then be in a position to tm-
dertake the study of

Pianoforte Improvisation,

i.e., rapid and spontaneous instrumental composition.
For this section of musical education, whidi is the
sjmthesis of all the others, the student will require a
special technique for fingers, hand, and arm, etc.,
facilitated, like that in solf ^e, by his training in rhythm-
ic movement. The above exercises will therefore
have to be adapted to new requirements created by
instrumental technique. These will naturally embrace
the special and universally known exercises, without
which it would be impossible to acquire perfect virtu-
osity. But we must point out that what pianists call
"technique" is too often confused with simple rapidity.
Dancers of the old school, though possessing extraor-
dinary velocity, are devoid alike of balance in execut-
ing continuous movements and of feeling for correct
nuances, phrasing, and successions of harmonised ges-
ttu-es — and yet they pass, with spectators and critics,
for past masters in virtuosity, the word virtuosity
being, to them, synonymous with velocity! The same

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Rhythm, Solf6ge, Improvisation 137

is apt to happen with regard to instrumental virtuosity,
which becomes a mere exercise in rapid movements,
failing to produce that unity of perceptive and reflective
sensorial and analytical activities, which alone can con-
duce to perfection of style. Every musical manifesta-
tion should rest on a joint physical and intellectual
basis, demonstrating the inseparability of body from
soul. If instnunental technique is to produce a mere
mechanical flexibility of fingers, why not replace these
by even more efficiently flexible machines? For our
purposes the ideal technique can only be attained by
a constant collaboration of fingers and brain, allying
muscular sensations with emotional feeling. A musical
virtuoso requires more than mere agility and physical
power, vitality, and instinct for decorative effects: he
requires, in addition, diversity of touch, in slow as in
quick movements, in nms as well as in melodic phrases ;
balance of dynamic effects; the art of musical "breath-
ing," that is, of establishing regulated contrasts; and
the art of adapting to his particular temperament the
individualistic effects of the great composers. " I know
few pianists capable of treating a "run** as a simple
acceleration of speed in the musical realm of ideas and
feelings, and who refrain from isolating the particular
line of the run from the ensemble of divers opposing or
converging lines constituting the architecture of the
piece.

* We should mention the remarkable work by Mile. Blanche Selva,
on Pianoforte Technique in which may be f otmd highly interesting ob-
servations on the physiology of movements at the piano. The exercises
of the Selva method, like a number of the Leschetizky, Philipp, and
Matthay methods, are based on direct observation of the natural
rhythms of the band and arm.

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138 Rhythm, Music, and Education

Before touching the piano the student should possess
the muscular mechanism necessary for its mastery —
at least, as regards the practising of preparations and
repressions of movements, and combinations of sjmer-
gic and constraining muscles. He should likewise be
familiar with the elements of soK^e, and possess the
ear to enable him to compare mentally soimds on paper
with those he is about to produce on the instrument.
The following table of exercises is foimded on the pre-
ceding two, with which the reader would do well to
compare it. It does not include the regular exercises
in harmony and counterpoint, which are indispensable
for pianoforte improvisation, and which may be prac-
tised concurrently with our own.

Application of Exercises in Rhythm and SoLFfecE
TO Practice of Pianoforte Ibiprovisation

1. Exercises in Muscular CarUr action and Decontrac-
tion. — Study of the different mechanisms of the arms ; at-
tacking soimds by means of different starting-points in
the movement of the arm, forearm, and wrist. Study
of articulation of the shoulder, forearm, wrist, and
fingers, in associated and dissociated movements (iso-
lated and combined articulations) ; divers articulations
of the fingers (phalanges, cushions, and tips) wrist
raised or lowered, etc. Dissociated movements, verti-
cal and horizontal, legato and staccato. Technique of
the pedal.

2. Metrical Division and Accentuation. — Study of
the scales with regular accentuations, and equal time-

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Rhythm, Solf^ge, Improvisation 139

measures (duolets, triolets, qiiadriolets, quintolets, etc.)
in every tone and tempo. The same with arpeggios
and successions of chords. Regular accentuations in
unequal beats (alternations of duolets and triolets,
quadriolets and sextolets, etc.). Irregular and pathetic
accentuations at the word "hopp." Application of all
these exercises to different rhythmic formulae.

3. Metrical Memorisation. — ^The student plays scales
and successions of chords not specially accentuated. By
means of the command **hopp," the master calls for a
series of notes, regularly or irregularly barred and ac-
centuated. The student memorises their number and
accentuation, and repeats them (without "hopps*')-

4. Rapid Conception of Time by the Eye and Ear. —
The master plays softly, at a second piano, scales in
various times of rhythms. The student at once imi-
tates (in syncopation) the rhythms and accentuations,
noticing the repetition of accents, which he afterwards
reproduces from memory. The same with successions
of chords. The student plays chords or melodies upon
rhythms indicated on the blackboard.

5. Sttidy of Rhythms in Space by Means of the Muscu-
lar Sense. — ^The student, with his eyes closed, directs
his arms to different points of the keyboard, and meas-
ures the distance between these points, according to the
greater or lesser amplitude of the movements, and the
difference of the muscular sensations they call forth.
While pla3dng a scale, the master's "hopp" instructs
him to skip an octave, two octaves, or a third, fifth, etc.

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140 Rhythm, Music, and Education

6. Application of Exercises in Spontaneous WiU and
Inhibition to Piano-playing, — ^The master's "hopp"
calls for pauses and resumptions of playing, changes of
rhythm and tone, chords, transpositions, variations of
pace, alternations of nuances, etc.

7. Exercises in Concentration. Mental Hearing. —
While executing a succession of chords, the student
pauses to hear mentally the chord he ought to play.
Playing only three parts in a chorale for four voices,
and following the fourth part in his mind, etc.

8. Associations of Arm and Vocal Movements. — ^The
student sings a continuous melody, which he accom-
panies by chords or scales, and vice ver^a.

9. Exercises for the Acquisition of Numerous Auto-
matisms, and their Combination and Alternation with
Actions of Spontaneous Volition. — The student executes
a fixed rhythm, concentrating on its melodisation and
harmonisation. At the word * 'hopp,** he must invent a
rhjrthm of a diflEerent order. Or, vice versa, the * 'hopp "
evokes a modtilation simultaneously with a change of
rhythm, or a change of rhythm in only one of the hands,
etc. The voice follows the melody played on the piano ;
at '*hopp*' it suddenly opposes a different melody or
another rhythm — ^the "hopp" elicits changes of time,
suppressions or additions of beats, or fragments of
rhythms, etc.

10. II, and 12. Application of Rhythmic Exercises to
Pianoforte Execution. — Practice of agogic nuances, cal-

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Rhythm, Solf6ge, Improvisation 141

culated accelerandi and ritardandi; of s}mcopations, by
anticipation and retardation; of subdivisions of time-
durations, etc.

13. Exercises in Dissociations of Movements. — ^The
two hands plajdng with contrast of rhjrthm, time, nu-
ances, phrasing, tone-quantity, or tone-quality.

14. Study of Rests and Phrasing. — Sentences and
phrases; different kinds of rests and anacruses. Laws
of contrasts.

15. Double and Triple Speed and Slowness of Move-
ment.— The student plays scales or successions of chords
and, at * ' hopp, * ' augments or diminishes the pace doubly
or trebly. Agogic augmentation and diminution of
given rhjrthms. Combinations of double and half, triple
and double speeds, etc.

16 and 17. Plastic Counterpoint and Polyrhythm. —
The student's left hand plays a note or a chord on the
second half of the beat executed by the right hand.
And vice versa. Counterpoint in duolets, triolets, quad-
riolets, etc. Different rhythms, and beats in either
hand, and exercises in canon. Study of various kinds
of counterpoint — pianoforte cotmterpoint to vocal
themes and vice versa. Polydynamics.

18. '* Pathetic'' accenttuUion — Nuances — Laws of Ex-
pression.— Study of relations between harmony and
rhythm," chords and accentuations, agogics and d3ma-

> See fifth part of the Dalcroze method: L'lmffrovisaHon et Vaccom-
pagncmcfU au piano (Jobin & Cie, Lausanne). (In preparation.)

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142 Rhythm, Music, and Education

mics, touch and hearing. The part played by mod-
tilation in the development of musical themes, and in
expressions of spontaneous emotion.

19 and 20. Notation and Improvisation ofBhythms. —
The student improvises a bar at the piano; then no-
tates it as a figured bass. Pianoforte improvisation of
rhythmic accompaniments to vocalised melodies. In-
vention of rhythmic melodies to accompany barred
successions of harmonies.

21. Conducting Rhythms. — The student improvises
freely at the piano, under the direction of the master or
another student, who beats the time and indicates the
dynamic and agogic nuances.

22. Improvisation at Two Pianos {or in Quartet). —
Two students improvise alternate sentences or phrases.

A comparative study of the above three series of
exercises will serve to show the necessity for conscien-
tious research into the elementary relations between
the three principal branches of musical education. It
is significant that no previous study of harmony or
composition has indicated the reciprocal influence of
rhythms and d}mamics on melodies and harmonies.
In fact, musical education hitherto has failed to estab-
lish any correlation between the different constituents
of music, treating each as isolated and specialised.
Our musical mentors of to-morrow will have to work
towards the general harmonisation of these elements.

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CHAPTER VII

EURHYTHMICS AND MUSICAL COMPOSITION

(1915)

Rhythm in nature — Theory of the bom musician — Experi-
ments in musical rhythm — Contrasts between movement and
its arrests, sounds, and silences — New method of noting time-
values — Unequal beats — Analysis of the elements of a rhythm
— Rhythmic activity in dissociation and opposition — Musical
periods and the art of phrasing — The emotional effects of
rests — Agogic nuances — Twice and three times as fast and as
slow — Rubato — Observance of the sense of timerduration — New
education and methods.

143

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CHAPTER VII

EURHYTHMICS AND MUSICAL COMPOSITION (1915)

Have you ever found yotirself on some fine siunmer's
day lying on a grassy slope, watching the trees quiver-
ing with life, and above them the clouds ploughing a
blue sky, whilst a soft breeze stirs the leaves and
branches and causes the cornfields to imdulate. . . .
At first you will be conscious only of a vast collective
movement, a colossal harmony of sotmds and rhythms
. . . then, little by little, yotir eye ^d ear may dis-
tinguish details of the symphony, and discern in this
harmonious conglomeration a "whole polyrhythm of in-
comparable richness. Each larger rhythm will split
into nimierous distinct groups of smaller rhythms, and
blend or conflict with other movements of a diflFerent
order, the aspect varying infinitely according to the
degree of force of the wind which brings it to birth.
Nattire, in her eternal movement, vibrates both in
time and out of time. The mighty rhythm of the tmi-
verse is a compoimd of myriads of sjmchronising
rhythms of infinite diversity, each possessing individual
life. One cannot witness this polyrhythm without won-
dering that such rhythmic profusion as nattire pours
forth, whilst providing virtually the painter's whole
inspiration, so seldom appears to move or inspire the
musician. Music is a combination of rhjrthm and
»<> 145

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146 Rhythm, Music, and Education

soiind. How comes it that, since Beethoven, our mu-
sicians have sought progress only in harmony and tone,
and have lost the mastery of soimd-movements in
which the great Flemish composers and John Sebastian
Bach excelled? The ear is capable of appreciating
not only variety of tone-quality, nuances of intensity
and difference of pitch, but also the infinite variety of
time-values and duration. Primitive peoples manifest,
with regard to polyrhythm, far more ingenuity and
originality than oiu'selves. Would it not be worth a
musician's while to devote as much care to the study of
agogics and djmamics as to that of melody and harmony ?
At least, one would suppose that the experiments of
fellow-musidans, particularly sensitive to soimd-move-
ments, would not be without interest to him.

But this is apparently not the case, since so many
music professors find our attempts at education "by
rhythm" useless or fantastic. It might be worth our
while to reason with them, in the hope of converting
them; but life is too short, and we prefer creative work
to bandying words. One can tmderstand an inability
to recognise the equal importance of rhjrthm and sotmd
in music, but I maintain that no true musician, enter-
ing a hall of machinery in full movement, could fail to
be captivated by the whirr of the fabulous symphony
produced by the magic of combined and dissociated
rhythms, and to be tempted inevitably to extract the
secrets of this moving and quivering life that animates
nature, man, and his work alike.

There is a theory regarding the **bom musician,"
according to which no amotmt of musical study can

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Eurhythmies i47

have any influence on temperament. On this is based
the verdict of certain seers that rhythmic movement
can be of no direct service to the art of music; for (they
tell you) , on the one hand, it has nothing to teach the bom
musician, and, on the other, a person not bom a musician
can never be made one ! This theory, which is held by
many musicians, will not "hold water.** Etirhythmics
reveals to the bom musician a host of sub-conscious
resources, which he could otherwise acquire only by
dint of long years of laborious and repeated personal
researches and experiments. On the otiher hand, alone
among all systems of musical education, eurhythmies
is capable of awakening dormant or moribtmd tempera-
ment, of provoking in the organism the conflicts neces-
sary for establishing the control and balance of
resistances, and of bringing to consciousness, by means
of the harmonisation of cerebral and motor centres,
and the canalisation of nervous forces, undreamt of
among all systems of musical education, eurhythmies
is capable of awakening dormant or moribund tem-
perament, of provoking in the organism the conflicts
necessary for establishing the control and balance of
resistances, and of bringing to consciousness, by means
of the harmonisation of cerebral and motor centres, and
the canalisation of nervous forces, undreamt-of sources
of creative and artistic vitality.

It is impossible for those specialising in music to
judge eurhythmies from a public demonstration. The
minute work of analysing and constructing rhythms
can ooly be appreciated in the lessons, and then only
by persons who are themselves actually taking part
with their whole body and mind, i.e., personally experi-

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148 Rhythm, Music, and Education

endng them. A public demonstration can exhibit only
the results, conveying no idea of the enormous difficul-
ties body and mind encounter in combating nervous
resistances, and in performing their rhythmic functions
in calm and concentration.

But, apart from its general bearing on the hiunan
organism, eurhythmies exercises a furtiier influence on
the art of music itself — an influence that will assimie a
definite shape only when creative artists of all kinds
have thoroughly assimilated its principles, put them
into practice, and extended their scope. ... At the
same time, fifteen years of assiduous research have
accumulated a sufficient amount of evidence of the
potential creative powers (from the strictly musical
point of view) of the method to justify the pubUcation
of its principles. It would require a whole volume to
expotmd the detailed processes of otir experiments, and
the concatenation and association of ideas which they
have brought to Ught, and it is to be feared that a simi-
mary exposition of certain of our claims will appeal to
some minds as mere amiable paradoxes. We are con-
fident, however, that others, better trained, will im-
mediately grasp the essentials of our system, and it is
to them that we dedicate these suggestions which only
time can fully justify.

In no other system is rhythm treated with the peda-
gogic care accorded to other branches of musical science.
Berlioz, in a too-Uttle-read chapter, deplores the omis-
sion from conservatoire programmes, of special classes
in rhythm, and indicates the nimierous researches that
might be undertaken, and the profound studies to

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Eurhythmies i49

which a musician should devote himself, in this totally
tmexplored region of musical movement and dynamics.
He, however, neglected to place musical rhythm, and
to give a clear idea of the part it plays in musical
composition. We can judge a work of architecture only
in relation to the space in which it is constructed; and,
similarly, musical rhythms can be appreciated only in re-
lation to the atmosphere and space in which they move.
In other words, musical rhythm can be appreciated only
in relation to silence and immobility. Study the condi-
tions of silence and you at once create the necessity —
from the human as from the aesthetic point of view —
of furnishing it with its nattiral counterpoise — sotmd
— ^which, in breaking it, sets in reUef its enormous recu-
perative, and, consequently, emotional capacities. Mu-
sical rhythmics is the art of establishing due proportion
between soimd movement and static silence, of oppos-
ing them, and of preparing for the one by means of the
other, according to the laws of contrast and balance on
which all style depends; according to the nuances of
time and djmamics that constitute the individuality,
and the nuances of tone, pitch, and intensity of sotmd
which create in music that higher element of a mysti-
cal and impersonal nature, that connects the individual
with the universe. A rest in music is simply an inter-
ruption of the sound, or a transference into the region
of internal hearing of phenomena of external hearing.'
Unfortunately, the ambition of most of our present-day
musicians would seem to be to annihilate silence in
sound; and a regeneration of the art of music will

> The rest, while devoid of movement, is by no means devoid of life.
(Se« Chapter VI, page 125.)

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150 Rhythm, Music, and Education

largely depend on the place our future geniuses will
assign to "rests" in the architecttire of rhythm. The
realisation of the possibilities of the infinite variety of
time-durations is also in an embryonic stage, and an
inexhaustible source of new emotions will enrich the
art of musical expression once its scope, at present lim-
ited to the emplo}nnent of harmonic, contrapuntal, and
orchestral nuances, is extended to include all the new
emotional resources contributed by nuances of sound-
duration. All art is based on contrast. An accelerando
or ritardando attains vitality only by contrast with
the normal tempo. Ntiances of time exercise an irresist-
ible and inevitable influence both on melody and har-
mony; and the development of the latter will depend
not only on the extent to which musicians of the future
concern themselves with agogic and dynamic varia-
tions, but also on the direct influence of htunan emo-
tions on dturations of sotmds, of beats, and of bars — on
the reciprocal relations of these, and on their contrasts
with the higher and inexorable serenity of silence.

New NotaHonof Musical Time-values. — Before treating
of the relations of time- values, it will be convenient to es-
tabUsh certain new forms of writing these. Long notes in
compound time have up to the present been recorded by
means of a sltir between two or more notes of ordinary
duration (^.^. 9/8 ^^.J.$ or 15/8 ss^*^.).. Inin-
troducing bars of 5, 7, and 8 beats, also tmequal beats
and rhythms in which agogic nuances of a highly subtle
and delicate nature are obtained by successions of dif-
ferent and varied time values, the necessity arises of
amending our system of musical notation with a view

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Eurhythmies 151

to recording, no matter what gradations of time, by
reference to a single fixed symbol. The following is
suggested: as a dot after a note (^ • ) prolongs the latter
by half its value, two dots, one on top of the other (o :)
shall be taken to prolong it by a quarter of its value, and
three (oj) by an eighth of its value. (See Appendix,
Ex. I.)

Time Signatures. — ^We propose a new method of indi-
cating the time of a piece at the beginning, or changes
in the course of its development. In many cases the
present signatures are neither dear nor consistent. In
indicating a f bar the figure 3 denotes the number of
beats, and the 4 the duration of each beat; but in writ-
ing f the figure 6, instead of denoting the nimiber of
beats, denotes their sub-divisions, etc. It would be pre-
ferable to utilise the first nimiber to indicate consistently
the nimiber of beats, and to denote the duration of each
beat by the sjmibol corresponding to that duration.
(See Appendix, Ex. 2.)

Alternating Bars. — ^There is no reason to insist upon
regular bar-lengths throughout an entire piece. In most
folk-songs the melody is subject to irregularities of meas-
ure. It is only in the conventional and classical works of
the last two or three centuries that we find a systematic
division into regular bars. Far be it from us to object to
this classical regularity of bar-time, but, seeing that every
irregularity in a work of art must be the product of an
emotion, we suggest that the question of the employ-
ment of irregular bars should be the subject of special
analysis on the part of every musician. We have set

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15^ Rhythm, Music, and Education

out briefly the divers causes of an emotional nature
that may justify the exceptional use of irregular bars
in the most scientifically constructed music. (See Ap-
pendix, Ex. 3.)

The Coincidence of Metre and Harmony, — Every
change of time or rhythm calls for modifications in the
harmony. Metre and harmony have a reciprocal influ-
ence on each other, and a succession of notes scanned
in threes requires a different harmonisation from one
scanned in fours. The same sounds may be treated
either as integral parts of the harmony or as unessential
notes, according to the metre. And the resulting vari-
ations of harmonisation, apart from their metrical sig-
nificance, constitute an excellent exercise for the student
of harmony. (See Appendix, Ex. 4.)

Anacrusis and Phrasing. — The unity of a musical
phrase depends not only on the shape of its melody,
but also on the logical use of its rhythmic elements.
If we closely analyse any classical work, we shall find
that the impression of order which it conveys is due to
the fact that no element of form alien to the main idea,
which is the product of a general emotion, is allowed to
enter other than as a contrast to the elementary rhythm,
on which the initial theme is based. Mathis Lussy, one
of the pioneers in the study of the physiology of rhythm,
has written a book wholly devoted to anacrusis, which
every musician has read or should read.' This is not
the place to insist on the importance of the anacrusis

^VAnaarouse, by Mathis Lussy (Heugd, ^teur, 2 bis, Rue Yvn-
cnne, Paris).

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Eurhythmies 153

in musical phrasing. An analysis of the elements con-
stituting a very simple rhythm (see Appendix, Ex. 5)
will, however, indicate the profound modifications
in the plastic aspect of a rhythm, and in its influ-
ence on the sound of that rhythm, introduced by an
anacrusis.

Contrasts of Activity and Repose. — Having established
the relations and manner of combination of the divers
elements of a rhythm, we must next show how — by the
repetition of rhythms, alternating either with rests (con-
trasts of activity and repose) or with the opposition of
different rhythms — one achieves the logical construction
of musical phrases.

All art is based on contrasts, on antitheses. Picto-
rial art depends on contrasts of light and shade, on
contrasts and shades of colotir. The art of architecture
consists of contrasts of lines and plastic material. In
music, the simple development of primordial rhythmic
elements produces an effect of monotony. After every
form of activity, our htmian nattire requires to recuper-
ate by resting or changing the nature of its movement.
To study the nature of contrasts — the nuances of ac-
tivity and of its antitheses, and of their carefully bal-
anced manifestations, and the harmony of opposing
movements in the individual tmder the influence of
feelings and sensations — ^is to surprise the secrets of
sentient and sensitive life itself. (See Appendix, Ex. 6.)

We have now shown the fundamental laws according
to which balance may be established between the dif-

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154 Rhythm, Music, and Education

ferent elements of a rhjrthm — between a rhythm, its
repetition, and contrasts of silence or coimter-activity.
There remains for us to trace the results of our system
in so far as they involve the introduction in logical se-
quence of the elements of a dynamic and agogic order.
These are the direct product of spontaneous emotion,
creating individual life in the social order and diversity
in unity.

Let us treat first of the irregularity of beats, and
endeavotu" to show how, once the alternation of uneven
bars is admitted, we are led, in attempting to combine
two such measures so as to form what we may call a
compoimd measure, to originate a new means of ex-
pression : unequal beats.

Unequal Beais. — Regular compoimd bars are produced
by the grouping at double or triple speed of regular bars.
Just as we may vary these by introducing imeven bars,
so uneven groupings of notes of short duration may be
formed. These will produce at first sight an impression
of irregularity. But their conscious and persistent repe-
tition will create a new regularity and sjmimetry which
will prevent their compromising the unity of the metre.
Incidentally, this manner of grouping exists in embryo
in the alternating accentuations of six quavers in |
and I times. (See Appendix, Ex. 7.)

Many musicians fear that these disparities and irregu-
larities may prejudice unity of style, by producing
abrupt and jerky phrases and rhythms. It is, however,
an established fact that every series of uneven time-
values repeated at regular intervals gives an impression

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Eurhythmies 15S

of regulariiy, in the same way that the twelve-foot
rhjrthm, of an alexandrine, since Victor Hugo, is re-
tained intact, though those twelve feet, previously sev-
erable only into 6 and 8, may now be spUt into sections
of three fours, four threes, six twos, and even into varia-
tions of four and eight, three, five, and four, etc. Par
from abruptness, the style has thereby acquired a new
flexibility. Exactly the same is happening in music.
It is necessarily difficult to describe in words the broad
value of this new means of musical expression and
shading already used by a few musicians like Ravel,
Cyril Scott, Stravinsky, etc. Those who are impervious
to the psycho-physiological appeal of these emotional
irregularities could never be moved to employ them,
or — if they were, would not be able to employ them
naturally. Education may, however, if tmdertaken in
time, repair all such deficiencies. (See Appendix, Ex.
8.)

Changes of Pace. — ^The subdivision into three shorter
notes of an isolated beat, in a bar whose regular beats
are twofold — or vice versa — ^may be adopted in the suc-
ceeding bars as a regular subdivision, and thus initiate a
quicker or slower pace, as the case may be. That is the
real meaning and purpose of the agogic nuances desig-
nated under the approximate indications of un poco piU
lento or un poco piU animato; it may also help us to ap-
preciate the so-called rvbato in Hungarian music, which
is not a real rubato, but whose eflfects of contrasted move-
ments are produced by the establishment, as time-unit,
of neither the crotchet nor the quaver, but the semi-
quaver. (See Appendix, Ex. 9.)

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156 Rhythm, Music, and Education

Rests, — ^The rest in music is the negative equivalent of
the sound-duration that it replaces; and, inversely, sound
is the positive equivalent of the rest for which it is sub-
stituted. The art of music might derive enormous
benefit from a new conception of musical sotmd as con-
trapuntal to silence (rests) instead of as obliterating the
latter, as is the present practice. Actually, the maxi-
mum time occupied by rests in the course of a sym-
phony lasting three-quarters of an hotir is not more
than two or three minutes. We smile at the ineptness
of a painter who overloads his canvas with colour, but
it never occtirs to us to question the taste of the com-
poser in according an infinitesimal place to the sole
element of contrast that can throw soimd-movement
into adequate relief — the rest. A rest serves to conceal
preparation for succeeding activities. The length of
this preparation for future action depends on the cause
of the preceding arrest of activity.

Movement may be suspended —
(a) by sudden exhaustion;
(J) by progressive exhaustion.

The interruption, that is, the rest, may be followed —
(a) by an immediate restmiption of energy and

activity;
(6) by a slow recuperation of energy.

In each of these cases, the preparation for the rest,
and the resumption of movement, are of different na-
ture and speed.

Through rests, music may acquire a third dimension —
length, breadth, and depth (the rest, Uke a note-value,
penetrates, so to speak, the voltmie of the rhythm).
Provision is made for rests in every art, save music.

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Eurhythmies 157

which alone pours itself out in a constant flow of nerv-
ous energy, in incessant volubility, insuflBciently punc-
tuated for breathing purposes. Imagine four persons
all talking vigorously at once. . . . According to the
classic sjmiphonic procedure, there may be an occa-
sional lull, while one or other of them is silent. But there
will awajrs be at least one to continue the discussion.
And with what prolixity and self-assurance ! This shows
a fundamentally false conception, the complete rest
forming one of the most natural elements of contrast.
A rest, while deprived of movement, is by no means
deprived of vibration. . . . While the sound is ar-
rested, the external rhythm becomes internal, and con-
tinues to vibrate in the hearer's organism. Silence may
be more eloquent than speech. Succeeding soimd, it
perpetuates the latter in the soul of the auditor —
whether in music, or in conversation. We recall
Molifere's couplet:

'* A sigh, or a blush, or a look of despair,
Or even a silence, the heart may lay bare."

(See Appendix, Ex. 10.)

Twice and Three Times cls Quickly and Slowly. — Un-
der the impulse of particular emotions rhythms may
quicken or slacken. Musical form, established on
sotmd traditions, admits the possibility of a double or
quadruple, half or quarter, speed of binary rhythms;
of triple or sextuple, third or sixth, speed of ternary
rhythms. Why not double the speed of ternary, or
triple that of binary rhjrthms — ^an entirely new devel-

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158 Rhj^m, Music, and Education

opment ? Why not halve the speed of quinary rhythms,
quintuple the speed of binary rhythms?

Music is composed, in Schumann's phrase, with our
heart's blood. Why be content with such a pedantic
circulation of that blood? The circulation depends on
oiu* nervous system, on oiu* general or particular emo-
tional state, or temperament, that modifies from day to
day the circtunstances of otu* life, the acuteness of otu*
desires, our prejudices, our revolts, our appeasements,
and our submissions. Is not variety the essence of art ?
And may not variety exist in time-values and their
infinite degrees as well as in harmony and tone-colour?
It may be objected that a poet may remain perfectly
natural while conforming to the classical exigencies of
lyric expression. Granted; but in poetry, it is a ques-
tion of arranging words rhythmically to express pre-
existent thoughts, whereas in music it is the rhythm
itself, produced by emotion, that most commonly gives
birth and form to the melodic idea.

A mtisical education should therefore encourage the
free development and progress of rhythm. Every aug-
mentation of this faculty, in providing new media of
expression, will contribute to the enrichment of music
as a whole. (See Appendix, Ex. ii.)

The realisation of original, beautiful, and finished
inspirations demands an adequate organism. Unfor-
tunately, too many ideas and visions fail to attain
expression through lack of flexibility and mobility in
the exponent. A musician, steeped in the classical
traditions of rhythm and measure, will never be able
to avail himself of the achievemwts of eurhythmies.

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Eurhjrthmics i59

until he has assimilated the media of expression pro-
duced by the practice of one or other system of educa-
tion by and in rhythm. Exercise develops our organs.
Musi(^ educationalists have only to meet in S3rmpathy,
and collaborate, for the cause of eurhythmies to be won.
In twenty years* time, the new methods we are advo-
cating will have become classic. For the time being
we are up against not only the indifference, but even
the resistance of certain musicians. These negative
spirits — ^who disparage or denounce original works
without attempting to understand them — ^are often
mere "grousers," disillusioned alike as to themselves
and their calling. Others scorn the new out of venera-
tion for the old. They, at least, may be respected,
and even have their uses, acting as signposts on the
road to progress, reminding pioneers that their work
can live so long only as it constitutes a logical evolution
out of past endeavotu*. Etu*hythmics requires for its
ideal manifestation the intimate, whole-hearted col-
laboration of a great pianist, a great singer, a great
master of harmony, a great conductor, and several ac-
complished instrumentalists — one and all devoting heart
and soul to their work. Durable artistic works are
not created out of mere intuition: they demand a com-
plete mastery of their art, by the acctunulation of
experience on experience. Artists of the present day
are manifestly deficient in feeling for simple time-dura-
tions and their potential nuances. They are careful to
avoid wrong notes and wrong harmonies, but remain
blissfully unconscious of correct time- values. Has one
ever known a critic protest against mistakes of this
sort? And yet, for musicians who have studied eu-

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i6o Rhythm, Music, and Education

rhythmics and possess the time-sense, the degrees of
time-duration constitute a scale of shades to be as
carefully followed as variations of pitch. Inter alia, a
whole new literature for the organ will be produced once
organists have acquired this sense of time — that instru-
ment being deprived of all nuances of a tactile nattu^.
Obvioudy, a revolution in style cannot be accom-
plished in a day. Every style is the product of the
ideas and practices of the period. But how are modem
ideas ever to take definite shape so long as our musicians
refuse to discard the methods of the past, to adopt
even the means of attaining progress; while they refuse
even to investigate the claims of those whose instinct
informs them of possibilities of expression hitherto un-
thought of? Education by and in rhjrthm is in effect
no more than a collation and development of the ideas
that are everywhere in the air. Thus unequal beats,
unconsciously employed by a few of our musicians, are
in constant use in the East. The whole art of musical
expression may be enriched by the new sensibility
resulting from the acquisition of a sense of time-dura-
tion and all its nuances. In seeking to initiate compos-
ers of to-morrow into the logic of unequal bars, unequal
beats three times as fast and other rhjrthmical devices,
our intention is by no means to influence them to com-
pose in a new style, but merely to assure a greater
scope for the expression of their genuine emotional
impulses. Admittedly, our illustrations are for the most
part examples of irregular form; but, on the one hand,
irregularity, as an exceptional device, will serve to throw
regularity into relief, and, on the other, a succession of
irregularities constitutes, in effect, a new form of regu-

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Eurhythmies i6i

laxity. The alternation of styles is a powerful means of
miisical expression, since in music, more than in any
other art, contrast plays an active part in the structure.

It goes without saying — ^we lay stress on the repeti-
tion— that the utilisation of these divers new rhjrthmic
processes for purposes of musical composition will be
possible only after a careful process of assimilation.
The initiation of musicians, susceptible only to external
phenomena, into the harmonic devices of men like
Debussy, Sch6nberg, or Stravinsky, can inspire only
artificial, insincere, and consequently inexpressive pro-
ductions. Similarly, the application of the many means
of modifying rhytiuns by doubling and tripling the
speed or slowness of isolated beats, by dissociations or
irregular groupings of sounds, etc., will produce only
illusory effects of virtuosity, so long as this new tech-
nique is not sufficiently engrained in the composer as
to be directly and unconsciously subservient to his men-
tal processes. It is to be feared that much water will
flow under the bridge before our rhythmic education
will have sufficiently penetrated and modified mentali-
ties and organisms for its potential effects to be em-
ployed with ease and grace. Our primary concern — ^as
we have said before — ^is that musicians trained in the
methods of yesterday should devote themselves to the
study of those of to-morrow. Not until then will piano-
forte masters realise the beneficial influence of educa-
tion by and in rhythm on the study of instnmiental
technique, and teachers of composition appreciate the
necessity of ever more closely co-ordinating sound and
movement — ear, feeling, and temperament.

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CHAPTER VIII

MUSIC, JOY, AND THE SCHOOL (1915)

The school in relation to society and the family — The nervous
system and sensibility in general — What is music? — Various
musical pedagogues realise their deficiencies and the need for
reform — The present curriculum — Essence of music — Rhythm
and tonality — Personal rhythmic experiences and mental
deodopment — What should be taught in music lessons at pri-
mary schools ? — The ear and temperament — The joy of self-
knowledge — Joy and will-power — Joy and the social sense —
Good habits— Art and school files.

i«3

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CHAPTER VIII To Albiet Malche

MUSIC, JOY, AND THE SCHOOL (1915)

School is a preparation fox life: in other words, the
child, on leaving school, should be in a position not
only to fulfil the divers obligations of social life, but
also to exercise his will in his practical affairs, according
to his particular temperament and without impinging
on the rights of others. And the training, at school, of
his brain, body, will, and sensibility, should be under-
taken simultaneously; no one of these four indispensable
factors being neglected in favour of another. Imagine
the horrible, possible consequences, for example, of
developing body at the expense of brain ! And of what
use is brain without will? And again, must not brain
and will combined remain ineffectual, so long as they
are not regtdated, controlled, and harmonised by moral
sensibiUty?

I contend that schools ignore the training of sensi-
bility, with deplorable results on the development of
character. It is — to say the least of it — strange that
with the existing prevalence of netirasthenia, no attempt
is made to direct the boundless desires arising from ill-
controlled feelings; that, in newly developed countries,
where, for the most part, will-power is concentrated,
with a marked absence of scruple, on the attainment
of commercial success, educationalists show no anxiety

165

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i66 Rhythm, Music, and Education

to awaken the moral sense of the coming generation,
while in countries where too long established traditions
have a cramping influence on the development of indi-
viduality, no resort is made to expedients for arousing
temperament. And yet the means are at hand whereby
the coming generation might be trained to a greater
flexibility of spirit, a firmer will-power, an intellect
less dry and exclusive, more refined instincts, a richer
life, and a more complete and profound comprehension
of the beautiful.

A mere professional musician should perhaps hesitate
to approach a problem of such enormous scope. So
many pedagogues regard music as a mere secondary
branch of knowledge, entitled only to the last and least
place in the school curriculum : a poor, beggarly subject,
scarcely worthy of notice. And yet the greatest minds
of ancient and modem times have assigned to it an edu-
cational r61e of the highest significance. To the charge
of trespassing on the domain of education proper, the
musician has only to invoke the authority of Plato and
most of the Greek philosophers. He might likewise re-
fer to Montaigne, Helvetius, Locke, Leibnitz, Rousseau,
Goethe, and Schiller, for evidence that every healthy
educational system — that is, every system based on the
intimately reciprocal reaction of body and mind, feeling
and thought — assigns a pre-eminent place to music and
the arts subservient to it.

The fact that, in our schools not more than one or
two hours a week are devoted to music, goes far to
show that the word ''music'' has acquired an entirely
new significance in otir own educational system: it has
come to stand for the mechanical production, or, rather.

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Music, Joy, and the School le;

reproduction of sounds — a practice that depends ex-
clusively on imitation, and the end and aim of which is
to cram the child's mind with a certain number of sen-
timental tunes of the stock pattern. This certainly is
a conception of music very different from that associ-
ated witii the great names mentioned above. For these
masters music represented a sort of compromise be-
tween inspiraton and form, the art of self-expression
by personal rhythm.

Far be it from us to bring charges against any one.
We have no desire, in freely expressing our profound
convictions, to offend a host of educationalists, many
of whom, incidentally, are entirely at one with us in
the matter. These, we believe, hold, as we do, that in
many cases the relegation of music to the background
of the school curriculum is due to lack of musical
knowledge on the part of the teaching staff. It is grati-
iying to us to know that a considerable number of
members of the teaching profession recognise the inade-
quacy of their education in music, and declare that,
tiiemselves never having received a good musical edu-
cation, they are unable to bestow such on others. It
is beyond dispute that, at the present time, there is,
almost from all sides, an urgent call for the reform of
our musical education. Yet the greatest confusion pre-
vails as to the means of effecting this reform; other-
wise it would be simply unaccountable that, despite
the protests of all musicians, not music, but a mere
imitation of music, continues to be taught in most
schools. No heed is paid to the appeals of competent
authorities; and, whenever this important question is
r$d3edi the dullest dil^tt^tism appe^u^ to preside

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i68 Rhythm, Music, and Education

over, and too often to have the last word in, the
discussion.

We shall be told that music occupies too modest a
place in the school cturiculimi to admit of the reforms
urged by specialists, no matter how beneficial these may
appear to be. We entirely dissent from this view. One
cannot have it both ways. If one's daughter complained
that the height of her heels — as ordained by the ourent
fashion — prevented her from walking properly, one
would reply : * ' Then you must scrap them — unless you
prefer to make yourself ridiculous." And to the pro-
posal that music lessons, throughout the whole coiu'se
of training, must be limited to one hour a week, we
likewise reply : ' * Rather abolish music altogether from
your time-tables." One must have time for everything
— ^for music as for every other branch of study. If you
r^ard music as superfluous, leave it alone; but if you
attach importance to it, and the conventional time-
tables prove an obstacle, remove the obstacle.

Before everything else, one must make stu^ that the
teaching of music is worth while. And there must be
no confusion as to what is to be understood by "music."
There are not two classes of music; one for adults,
drawing-rooms, and concert-halls, the other for children
and schools. There is only one music, and the teaching
of it is not so difficult a matter as scholastic authorities
are apt to suggest at their congresses. Under an ideal
social system, everyone will make it his duty to dis-
pense his art and learning freely about him; every
true musician, both composer and artist, will devote
an hour daily to the giving of music lessons for the
benefit of the public; — ^then, and not till then, will the

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Music, Joy, and the Scho6l 169

problem be solved. We have a long way to travel
before that point is reached. Yet, may we not legiti-
mately ask of those upon whom the whole musi(^
training of otir youth depends, that they shall at least
regard music not as a pastime, but as an art ; — that they
shall treat it, and teach others to treat it, with respect
if not with love, as becoming to an art that, in a well-
organised social scheme, shotild impress every manifes-
tation of beauty with the cachet we call style.

So long as society is badly organised, so long will man
be unable to give thought to beauty. Once given the
opportunity, he will become a devotee of art, so far as
his innate capacities will allow him.

It is not the function of education to develop isolated
individuals. Its aim is far removed and higher : nothing
short of the progressive development of the race, the
perfecting of its thought and taste. One cannot cure
the disease of ignorance by increasing one's own know-
ledge. It is a question of taking precautionary meas-
ures for future guidance, of influencing the outlook
and disposition of the coming generation, and so mould-
ing it as to ensure the transmission to f uttu-e generations
of a strongly social instinct and more intense love of
truth.

To confine mtisical education to the teaching of a few
patriotic songs is to give the child "an idea of the ocean
by showing him a drop of water in a glass." A tune is
nothing other than a feeling expressed in a particular
language — music. What is the use of giving children
sentences to learn by heart in a language of which they
are ignorant? This absurdity is enacted daily in our
^ooU in th^ nam^ of riiusiq lessons! W^ shall be told

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170 Rhythm, Music, and Education

that this is an exaggeration, that the lessons are not
confined to the teaching of patriotic airs, that children
are also taught to read music at sight. Admitted that
in some schools children actually are taught to read
music. But how are they taught? It is not so much
the result as the method that matters (for our present
purposes). It is possible, by means of certain mathe-
matised and muscular processes, to contrive to read
music without possessing the slightest feeling for to-
nality. But it is precisely feeling for tonality that
should be created before everything — ^forming, as it
does — apart from rhythm — the whole essence of music.
Tonality is the vertebral column of harmony. A
melody, deprived of all time and rhythm, may yet
express feeling by means of gradations and contrasts of
tone and of modulations. A method that professes to
teach children to read music, and is not based on the
study of tonality or scales — the relations between tones
and semitones — must be dismissed as inadequate. It
may produce certain ephemeral results, but it can
never contribute to the musical progress and general
development of the race. And yet, as educationalists,
our aim must be ever in that direction. This alone
justifies, in the first instance, otir forcing children to
attend school. In their homes, they are surrounded
by the influence of tradition; school widens their hori-
zon, teaching them that man's duty does not consist
in working for the passing moment, but involves pre-
paring for the future.

The most important element in music lessons should
be their general effect of awakening in the pupil a love
for the art; for that purpose i1^ i§ neqe^sarjr — passing

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Music, Joy, and the School 171

from the general to the particular — to initiate him into
the two primordial elements of music : rhythm and tone.

Rhythm is the basis of all vital, scientific, and artistic
phenomena. It produces alike the element of order
and measure in movement and the idiosyncrades of
execution. The study of rhythm conduces to the for-
mation of an individuality for all ptirposes of life — that
is, a manner of expressing oneself according to the
rhythm most natural and native to one's being, which
again is largely dependent on one's constitution, blood
circulation, and nervous system.

Rhythm is ignored in our present educational s}rstem.
A vague attempt is made to inculcate some idea of
time, but children leave school without knowing the
meaning of rhythm. No one, surely, now doubts that
rhythm originates in the body itself! And it is worth
noting that the most gifted of all artistic peoples, from
the rhythmic point of view — ^the Greeks — in marking
the rhythm of their verses, designated the rhythmic
luiit by the term **foot," which usage has passed into
most modem languages. And yet we have long ceased
to scan verses by means of bodily movement, and
rhythm has become a purely intellectual conception.
That is why children find it so difficult to acquire a
feeling for music rhythm, in reading at sight. And we
are reduced to the necessity of deliberately severing, for
purposes of school training, the two fundamental and
equally important elements of music — ^movement and
tone. To teach them simultaneously would confuse
the child and compromise the whole effect of the train-
ing. The child must therefore forego the study and
analysis of keys, until he is well practised in rhythmic

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172 Rh5^hm, Music, and Education

movements. The image of these experiences m corpor-
al rhythm, impressed and re-impressed on his mind,
will awaken and develop his rhythmic consciousness;
just as, later on, the image of the tonal experiences of
the ear, likewise repeatedly engraved on the memory,
awakens and develops a feeling for tone. This com-
prises all that is required in the way of musical educa-
tion at school.

We now propose to put a few simple questions,
by the replies to which, we may judge whether the
present system is worth preserving, or whether a reform
of musical education is really necessary.

1. Are you of opinion that the child should learn
the meaning of words before he is taught to read or
write them?

The answer will presumably be in the affirmative.

2. Do you believe that a child will instinctively
shun any disagreeable sensation — for instance, that
he will keep away from fire before he has been
burnt?

Answer: No.

3. Do you believe that an oyster, encrusted in shell,
can understand the delight of a hare in scampering
over meadows and woods?

Answer: No.

4. Do you believe that a myope could follow with
the naked eye the flight of an aeroplane crossing the
frontier?

Answer: No.

5. Are you of opinion that one can hear music bet-
ter with a good than with a bad ear?

Answer: Yes.

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Music, Joy, and the School i73

6. Are you of opinion that, by training, even medi-
ocre faculties may be developed?

Answer: Yes.

The unanimity of the replies all intelligent folk will
return to these questions justifies us in declaring that
the present system of musical education should be com-
pletely reformed. We must begin by setting children
exercises in hearing music; for, strange though it may
seem, in very few coimtries is this the present procediu*e !

We must again apologise to those of our colleagues
who have improvised hearing-exercises in their particu-
lar classes. We realise that many of them share our
views, and we are extremely gratified. But we are now
speaking of our school syllabus, according to whidi
music lessons comprise making children hear what they
do not understand, read what they cannot understand,
and write down what they have never learnt or felt.

I may be told that in every dass there will be found
some pupils who hear and understand perfectly.
Granted; but they do so, not as a result, but in spite of
the training. It does not follow, in our opinion, that
any one who can read music competently must neces-
sarily be musical. A person without any feeling for
music may read with great facility, while another may
read extremely badly and yet possess exceptional mu-
sical gifts.

The essential is that one should have a good ear, and
so be able to appreciate the infinite nuances of pitch
and of dynamism of soimds, developments, and oppo-
sitions of rhythm, and contrasts of tonality;' and that
musical training should develop inner hearing — that is,

» See Chapter V, p. 95.

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174 Rhjrthm, Music, and Education

the capacity for hearing mtisic as distinctly mentally
as physically. Every method of teaching should aim,
before everything else, at awakening tliis capacity.
We hold also that it shotild conduce to the development
of the individuality, and the perfecting of the whole
mechanism of thought and feeling; achieving, in short,
the co-ordination of experience and memory, experi*
ence and imagination, the automatic and the conscious,
the conscious and the requisites of temperament and
fantasy.

The training of sensibility and temperament should
precede that of the ear, for rhythm (a product of the
balance of active nervous forces) is a f imdamental ele-
ment of music, as of every other art, and, indeed, of
every vital manifestation. And even if his hearing
faculties should later prove insufficient to qualify the
child to pass for a musician, in the ordinary sense of
the word, the training we advocate will have served to
enable him, so to speak, to enter into his individuality.
Initiated into the marvellous mechanism of his body,
given to him for consecration as a worthy dwelling-
place for the soul — confident of achieving without effort
or preoccupation any and every movement suggested
by others or of his own volition — the child will experi-
ence a growing yearning to make full use of the abtm-
dant forces in his control. His imagination will likewise
develop as his mind, released from all constraint and
nervous disquietude, gives full rein to his fantasy.

Ftmctioning develops the organ, and the conscious-
ness of organic functioning develops thought. And as
the child feels himself delivered from all physical em-
barrassment and mental obsession of a lower order,

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Music, Joy, and the School 175

added to the sense — acquired by the practice of com-
bining his individual efforts with those of the rest of
the class — of participation in a collective movement,
he will conceive a profoimd joy, of an elevated charac-
ter, a new factor in ethical progress, a new stimulus to
will-power.

I call this joy "elevated," because it will not be based
on external circtunstances. It will be distinct from
pleasure, in that it becomes a permanent condition of
the being, independent alike of time and of the events
that have given rise to it; an integral element of our
organism. It will not necessarily be accompanied by
laughter, as is gaiety; it may qtiite well make no ex-
ternal display; it will flower in the hidden recesses of
the ego, in tiie mysterious garden of the soul, where
the sap of our individuality is secreted, a sap that can-
not be squandered — ^whidi may be applied in every
direction, and never exhausted. Joy arises in the child
the moment his faculties are liberated from any re-
straint, and he becomes conscious of his control over
them, and decides on the direction in which that con-
trol shall be exercised. This joy is the product of a
joint sense of emancipation and responsibility, com-
prising a vision of our creative potentialities, a balance
of natural forces, and a rhjrthmic harmony of desires
and powers.' Germinating in the creative faculties,
innate or acquired, this joy increases in proportion as
our powers develop and our will frees us from the
shackles that have burdened us from birth. The gift of
self-knowledge, conferred on the child by an education

•"Joyisasoul-foroe." . . . " Joy iUummates thought" . . . **JaU
ei Action" by Henri Bois, Sociiti d*SdUion de Toulouse^ 1910.

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176 Rhythm, Music, and Education

calculated to cultivate every vital spiritual and physi-
cal faculty, will produce a sense of liberation and
independence. This self-knowledge Will mean that his
education has effected a thorough co-ordination, not
only of imagination and its practical activities, of per-
ceptions and feelings, but also of the different kinds of
impulses and emotions. Who could resist a feeling of
joy at acquiring the power of rapid association of ideas,
the capacity of more speedy and clearer-sighted analy-
sis of the motives of futiu*e actions, and more distinct
presentiment of the effects of present ones? **Joy," in
Bergson's words, * *is at once heat and light. * * In certain
exceptional persons this light glows from birth. But
this is not the case with many children, and it is the
fimction of teachers, by care and perseverance, to
create in their obscure souls the ray of joy which at first
may glimmer faintly and intermittently, but which
eventually will illtmiinate and keep ablaze a whole
hearth of light and heat, ever increasing in warmth,
lustre, and beneficence. This light will illuminate not
only the present, but the future. It will guide htunanity
along its present path and to its ultimate destination.
Not from without do we receive and assimilate it:
it must arise from within ourselves, and irradiate from
the centre of our being. We cannot contain it. Irre-
sistibly, it must spread its lustre upon those about us,
not only those in our immediate neighbourhood, but
upon apparent strangers. Who, indeed, possessing this
quality of radiance, could resist a yearning to exercise
it for the benefit of others ? How should even the most
hardened egoist be content to keep to himself an influ-
ence exuding with such force and such splendid spon-

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Music, Joy, and the School i77

taneity from the springs of his being? The more joy
we inherit, the more we are tempted to impart it
among those to whom it has been denied. And so,
like the soldier of Marathon, who bounded away, his
heart leaping with ecstasy, to spread the glad tidings,
till, disregarding and gradually exhausting his powers,
he collapsed at the moment of annoimcing the victory,
but who expired in the joy of having accomplished his
mission, — so we, too, must expend our forces, not only
in exulting over our hardly regained faculties and the
joy that has come to birth in us, but also in freely
disseminating this joy among our conu-ades.

And how is this joy created and nurtured and made
durable? Simply by the realisation of our ambition to
utilise to the full all that is capable of utilisation in us,
and to master, by unceasing endeavour, new proclivi-
ties producing, in their turn, subconscious impressions
of such force, as to burst forth from us, pervading our
whole environment. Our whole lives depend on habits.
Our misfortunes arise from bad, as our joys from
good ones. The mere rectification by an effort of will
of some habitual tendency, however insignificant, will
serve to give us the self-confidence necessary for under-
takings of far greater scope. Who can achieve the little,
can achieve the great. Once the child has planted his
foot firmly on the path of progress, he will find it com-
paratively easy to keep a straight course, without wast-
ing his energies. The difficulty is not so much to
exercise powers as to wiU such exercise. Once arrived at
our destination, what matters the time we have taken!
The essential is that we should have been able to make
the journey, and have known where we were going.

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178 Rhj^hm, Music, and Education

Only good habits have maintained us while on the
march. The more we cultivate these, the more our
power increases. Joy is attained with the first step
towards progress. Thenceforward, it will intensify un-
ceasingly; rendering us capable of the highest and most
unexpected achievements. Finally, combining with
our subconscious forces, it will take firm root, and, fol-
lowing the inevitable law of life, bring forth buds and
fruits and flowers.

It stands to reason that the attainment of this per-
manent state of joy, at once sensorial, emotional, and
intellectual, must intensify the child's imaginative and
artistic faculties. ^Esthetic emotion is a product of the
refinement of the senses, susceptibility of the nervous
system, and mental flexibility. Whatever the child's
natural artistic proclivities, a conscientious study of
the phenomena of movement, both in himself and in
natme, cannot fail to produce a more vivid compre-
hension of art as a whole. Art is compound at once of
imagination, reflection, and emotion. Reflection tem-
pers and refines the imagination ; imagination gives life
to style, and emotion ennobles and sensitises the pro-
ducts of sensation, reflection, and imagination.

The question may be asked whether it is really worth
while to train hundreds of yotmg people in artistic
pursuits for the purpose of public performances. Cer-
tainly, in these troubled times, little thought is given
either to art or to the stage. But this has been a charac-
teristic of all periods of abnormal stress. Besides,
artistic studies are not designed solely for the training
of professional artists: they aim also at forming a
public capable of appreciating artistic representations.

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Music, Joy, and the School 179

of entering into the spirit of them, and of feeling the
emotion they may have served to express. Scholastic
instruction is not enough. Training of the senses and
mind alone can raise the public taste to such a pitch
that, in the ideal of Adolphe Appia (one of the purest
artists of our time), the public shall actively collaborate
in sjnnbolic and poetic spectacles presented by men of
genius. For my part, I am convinced that education
by and in rhythm is capable of awakening a feeling for
art in all those who undertake it. That is why I will
continue my agitation for its introduction in our schools,
and for the enlightenment of our educationalists as to
the important and decisive r61e art should play in
popular education.

So far as pictorial, architectural, and sculptural art
is concerned, it is not enough that there be schools
in which the representation of lines, colour, light and
shade, relief and grouping, is taught: the students of
these schools must be trained to respond with their
whole being to the rhythmic movement that raises,
sets, balances, harmonises, and animates works of
statuary, architecttu-e, and pictorial art. Nor is it
enough to teach students of our conservatoires to inter-
pret masterpieces of music with their fingers. Before
everything, they must be initiated into the sensations
that have inspired the composition of these works, the
movement that gave life to their emotions, and the
rhythm which has regulated and refined them. A
Bach fugue is a dead letter to those who are unable to
feel in themselves the conflicts produced by the coimter-
point, and the sense of peace and harmony evoked by
the synergies.

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i8o Rhjrthm, Music, and Education

A true pedagogue should be at once psychologist,
physiologist, and artist. The complete citizen should
leave school capable not only of living normally, but
oi feeling life. He should be in a position both to create
and to respond to the creations of others.

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CHAPTER IX

RHYTHM AND CREATIVE IMAGINATION
(1916)

The man of genius and the crowd — Futility of teaching rules
of construction and classification before awakening artistic
imagination — Technique and invention — Temperament and
style — Order and balance — Methods and Kfe — The individual
ethic — The integral muscular sense — Irregularity of time-
values — Organisation of work.

181

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CHAPTER IX

RHYTHM AND CREATIVE IMAGINATION (1916)

Individuauty of Style, originality of technique, and
imaginative power do not of themselves constitute the
quality of genius in a work of art. The distinction
between a man of genius and a man of talent is that
the latter remains isolated from artists specialising in
branches of art other than his own — ^isolated, moreover,
from the common thought of the people to whom he
belongs, even though he be associated with a school, or,
for that matter, the foimder of one. A genius is the
direct product of a general spiritual and social develop-
ment— the representative of "milieu** — and his work
constitutes the spontaneous expression of the soul of a
race. His power consists in uniting in one compre-
hensive movement the individual movements of iso-
lated minds; in grouping in a single mighty rhythm
the particular rhythms of his contemporaries. Often
enough the aesthetic effects of the man of talent present
a more vivid appearance than those of the creative
genius: the latter being less ostentatious because more
serene, less picturesque because more composite. Too
many artists, in expressing complex emotions, will be
f otmd to sacrifice their innate sense of form. Too many,
again, only possess a sense of form from lack of imagi-
nation. Reasoning is so much simpler than imagining.

183

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i84 Rhythm, Music, and Education

The admirable offices of logic in concatenating ideas are,
however, a poor substitute for the rapid processes of
spontaneous emotions, creative of vivid images, thrown
out haphazard in their violent course, forming in their
fortuitous groupings ever new effects of combination.
No adequate attempt is made in our schools to develop
children's imaginative qualities; on the contrary, they
are suppressed by a continual insistence on analysis,
co-ordination, classification, and labelling. In our con-
servatoires, students are expected to bow before the
hallowed traditions and proprieties of technique, style,
and imagination. Admittedly, licence does not neces-
sarily conduce to beauty. Admittedly, one of the
ftmctions of education is to produce clear and or-
dered mentalities, trained in logic and analysis. But
let us not set the cart before the horse! Wliat is the
use of learning to construct before you are given ma-
terial with which to construct — of knowing all about
classifications before you have any ideas to classify?
A musical work without form, but revealing qualities
of passion and vitality, is siurely superior to a correct
but stereotyped harmonic exercise! True originality
is the product of individual ideas, not of picturesque
processes of expression. Before inculcating the means
of aesthetic expression, would it not be advisable to put
your futiu*e artist into contact with life and nature,
encouraging him to study their rhjrthms, to absorb
and identify himself with them — and then, if you like,
to interpret them?

If it be at all possible, on a careful analysis of the
works of master musicians from the point of view of
phrasing and shading, to deduce, from observation and

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Rhythm and Creative Imagination 185

comparison of characteristic passages, any general rules
of interpretation, there should yet be no question of
attributing to these rules the character of definite laws,
or of imposing them on students as such. In a great
number of cases, the strict application of general
principles of style will produce an interpretation of
the particular passage to be phrased, accurate in its
expression. But, where art and feeling are concerned,
accuracy is not enough; the artist must interpret music
in his own way, guided by natural instinct, to which
he should subordmate his whole individuality. The
only law of shading beyond dispute is that of contrdsL
This is the foundation of all rules of musical expression.
But no rules can compensate for lack of temperament,
and the master's first care should be to awaken the
temperament of his pupils, to cultivate their aesthetic
sense, and to develop their individual characteristics
by every means in his power. He should therefore
be careful, in expounding a new rule, to point out that
this rule may be, in practice, subject to innumerable
exceptions, and that an adequate musical interpreta-
tion is not so much an intellectual as a spiritual matter ;
he should invite his pupils to suggest other interpreta-
tions, to each of which he will accord a fair hearing —
even if it appears to him wrong — so as not to discourage
them, and to preserve their predilection for individual
expression . Undoubtedly aestlietic feeling develops some-
what late in children, and it is therefore indispensable
to formulate certain general rules for guidance; but the
master should point out that these rules may be re-
placed by others, and that the interpretation of any
particular melodic passage may vary according to the

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i86 Rhythm, Music, and Education

character of its predecessor and successor, in the same
way as, in instrumental exercises, the fingering of a
scale will vary with the notes on which it commences
and finishes. In short, the master should teach his
pupils the art of shading and phrasing in the same way
as a professor of counterpoint — a real artist, and not a
pedant — ^would initiate his pupils into the composition
of fugues, while indicating that the classic rules and
formulas are nothing until they are vitalised by artistic
feeling, love, and pursuit of beauty.

Far from me be the desire to limit the time given to
studies in technique, analysis of styles, and processes
of notation in the time-tables of schools of music.
Every musician must be acquainted with the trade
secrets of his calling, and, before inventing for himself,
must have learnt to imitate and reproduce. But not
all invention is of a creative nature. A sound education
should furnish the student with the means of extracting
only such parts of his reading and analysis as will be
useful to him, enabling him to strike out his own path
instead of following the beaten track. Undoubtedly
classical musical studies are indispensable ; but too often
the method of conducting them in conservatoires is
suitable only for those already acquainted with them,
and in whom the master has already awakened the
instinct for individual development and the distin-
guishing of processes congenial to their particular tem-
peraments. Too many imaginative faculties are aroused
quite late in life, owing to masters having demanded
only the execution of formulas, and encouraged a mere
imitation — ^first voluntary, later involuntary — of the
methods of composition bequeathed to us by prede-

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Rhythm and Creative Imagination 187

cessors of different temperament, instead of induc-
ing instinctive elementary researches, founded on the
consdotisness of actual physical and emotional capaci-
ties. Much has been written on the art that will follow
the cessation of hostilities, as though the War itself mttst
exercise an immediate influence on art. The determin-
ing factor in any new development of style will be our
attitude after the War, and the extent to which we seek,
in the period of reconstruction and reparation, to react
from past impressions, and to throw off every previous
constraint, purifying ourselves of effete doctrines and
automatic thoughts and productions — and so becoming
capable of expressing forcibly, and in an individual
manner (though, where necessary, also collectively),
our new emotions — freed from obsolete forms and
methods of education, and alive in every limb to the
acute consciousness of the present, and the foreknow-
ledge of the future.

One of the first concerns of the education of the future
will have to be the extrication of the rhyilims congenial
to particular individualities from the influences tending
to restrict their free expression, and the restoration to
the child of the exclusive control of his temperament.
A constant appeal will be made to his imagination; his
nervous system will have to acquire the necessary
flexibility to prevent the wealth of images issuing
through its agency from inducing a state of hypersen-
sitiveness. The body, instinct with motor force at
high pressure, will have to be prepared to execute
every behest of mind, and, after every such execu-
tion, to keep a sufficient reserve of energy. Many
parents at present shrink from having the creative

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i88 Rhythm, Music, and Education

imagination of their children developed. They are
afraid of their becoming "artists," under the impression
that it is impossible to be an artist without possessing
a "kink." And if it were? Is not this "kink" the root
of all wisdom? Artists, in their wanderings over un-
known countries of their own creation and transfigura-
tion, may surely be pardoned an occasional deviation.
Their philistine brothers have no merit in never losing
their way, since they keep vigorously and stolidly to
the beaten track, victims — ^if they only knew it — of their
lack of imagination. And yet creative artists possess
qualities of memory and accuracy which would secure
them the high regard of the phiUstines, were these to
suspect their existence. A painter, for example, recalls
every detail of the images that have arrested his eye;
his mind classifies, assorts, and combines them, and
transforms each active element into idealised forms
charged with emotion. But the essential is that his
work should be groimded in feeling. Too many of us
are on our guard against artistic emotions, afraid of
falling, in following our natural instincts. Our peo-
ple will only become really artistic through an edu-
cation in temperament and sensibility. Grace and
naturalness are commonly supposed to be incapable of
conscious acquisition. As a matter of fact, the natural
in art is nearly always the result of careful selection,
and a host of eliminations, sacrifices, transpositions, and
changes of place — all of which relate very definitely to
the conscious. The order, symmetry, and art of prepa-
ration and balance, that constitute the harmony of a
work of art, of preparation depend largely on the man-
ner in which the artist has learnt to subordinate each of

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Rhythm and Creative Imagination 189

the rhythmic elements of his theme to a general syn-
thesis and rhythmic unity. Rhythm is the live essence
of feeling, the fimdamental impulse of a movement in
the form impressed on it by tlie first emotional reac-
tion. Elementary rhythm requires the consonance of
each of its subdivisions to enable it to retain its power
of animating a continuously harmonised movement.
Rhythm and metre are the bases of all art. "Poems,"
said Emerson, "are a corrupt version of some text in
nature, with which they ought to be made to tally.
A rhyme in one of our soimets should not be less pleas-
ing than the iterated nodes of a sea-shell, or the resem-
bling difference of a group of flowers."

It is always interesting to distinguish the personality
of an artist beneath the divers forms of his creation,
to watch its modifications according to the whims of
his aesthetic instinct, to follow the successive experi-
ences dictated by his temperament. But the human
value of a work of art does not lie in its display of origi-
nality in manner and style: it depends on the sincerity
of the pursuit, and the disinterestedness of the love,
for beauty which it manifests. There is no dearth of
artists, whose sole motive is an ambition to develop
their "ego," and who love nature only in so far as she
enables them to express and vary their personal fancies.
The great creative minds, confronted with beauty, be-
come oblivious of everything that does not paitake
of beauty. They concentrate on expressing the emo-
tion it calls forth. They humble themselves before it,
becoming its passionate and faithful devotees. They
are prepared to sacrifice themselves for it; they seek
ever to raise themselves to its level; they lay bare their

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190 Rhythm, Music, and Education

hearts for beauty to take possession of them. What
are all our methods and systems, what matter if in-
stincts be primitive or cultured, what is all technique
and science, without love — ^love for life in beauty, and
beauty in life? Certainly there exist laws which enable
the artist to furnish a perfect form for the images
recorded by his intuition; there are fundamental prin-
ciples of ordination of lines, of juxtaposition and coal-
escence of colours and sounds, but in the completed
work, nothing of all this science should be manifest.
Alone, the feeling of rhythm — that is, the true, ideal,
creative essence, the fundamental harmony of nature —
should reveal itself: a direct, spontaneous, and faithful
reflection of Beauty.

It is the painter's fimction to diffuse himself in the
objects he sees, his works constituting an apparent ex-
pansion of the intense curiosity for the rhythms of life
and nature that animates his artistic consciousness.
This continual preoccupation with movement in picto-
rial art should commend itself to musicians. Painters
must also, like them, acquire the art of associating and
dissociating movements, of accentuating consonances,
creating counterpoint, treating human emotions sym-
phonically, and selecting appropriate gestures and at-
titudes for their expression in "orchestration."

"Rhythm is everywhere," as all artists are agreed;
but this sacred principle must not be allowed to remain
a mere statement. Only rhythm can assure the unity
of human faculties and constitute that ethical individu-
ality— ^if I may be permitted the term — the possession
of which reveals our divers potentialities, and trans-
forms the htunan organism into a confluence of ideas,

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Rhythm and Creative Imagination 191

sensations, and faculties — a living harmony of inde-
pendent entities voluntarily united.

Creative imagination in every branch of art was
obsessed in the period before the War, with the research
for novel effects, completely out of touch with normal
life. — (Or was it that life itself had so lost touch with its
natural rhythms that the artist was no longer capable
of rhy thmidsing his work realistically ?) On the rising
generation falls the duty of seeking to create mentali-
ties, clearer, more in conformity with instinct, and, at
the same time, more disciplined; likewise temperaments
at once richer in power and more conscious of their
composition. Musical education of the future, for in-
stance, will no longer confine itself to the laws of syntax
and vocabularies, but will comprise the development
of means of spontaneous expression, and the art of
combining and harmonising them by the process of
elimination and selection known as style. Music must
become once more a living language, a vital manifesta-
tion of thoughts and emotions. And, for this purpose,
greater scope must be allowed in its study for the
qualities of effusion, propulsion, and repercussion that
characterise total expression by sound.

Musicians of to-morrow must try to develop the art of
regulating planes, pursuing lines, and determining and
controlling pace. And this development will depend on
a new orientation that has yet to be created, to replace
the conventional methods of thematic development
(killed for all time by Debussy) by an architecture
satisfying at once the needs of emotional imagination
and the exigencies of form. All young painters to-
day are unanimous in their desire and resolve to dis-

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192 Rhythm, Music, and Education

card the artifices of camouflage decoration in favour
of all that is unchanging and permanent in form; that
endures throughout the ages to harmonise elements
rightly proportioned, to select only subjects directly
inspired by emotion, and to retain only essential sen-
sations completely and distinctly realised.*

Young musicians will aim at the same ideal, concen-
trating primarily on the control of emotions, on the
limitation of mere easy imitation of exceptional, acci-
dental, and decorative elements, renouncing the effects
of mere virtuosity that obscure the really human pro-
perty of conceptions, and spiritualising music by every
possible means. They will be unanimous in discarding,
in order to return to nature (i.e., to elementary emo-
tions and simple expression), every development of
an intellectual and didactic order, and every aesthetic
process issuing from a momentary fancy rather than
from a deep-seated sensibility, varjring in the most na-
tural, flexible, and elastic manner. . . . But these new
conceptions depend on a tmification of spiritual and
corporal faculties, that can be achieved only by an
assiduous training in movements in time and space,
and a diligent cultivation of the muscular sense.

This training alone can convey to the mind a feeling for
time-duration — one of the elements of music most in-
timately allied to sensibility (for only a feeling for move-
ment can reveal to us the laws by which modifications in
the acuteness of sounds unite with modifications in their
time and dynamic force). Only the possession of a
powerful muscular sense can enable the hearer to sub-

' Vide the interesting work by Ozenfeuit and Jeonneret, Apr^ U
Cubisme {Sdiiion des CommetUaires).

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Rhythm and Creative Imagination 193

stitute for the emotional state of the moment a condi-
tion that will respond to the motor sensibility of the
composer, and only such a sense can endow the latter with
the capacity of expressing himself spontaneously, with-
out permitting theories of a literary or mathematical
order to trespass on the domain of purified physical
sensations. The hearer of a work of music should be
able to say : ' * That is yourself! " But he can only sense
this constitution of the work, if it really appeals to him,
by means of emotions, mutually and genuinely experi-
enced, and sacrifices freely accepted.

The muscular sense is at present so imperfectly de-
veloped, both in the composer and in the interpreter,
that the latter — especially a pianist — usually disregards
the expressive potentialities of time-duration; while the
former, in many cases, is imconsdous of the shortcom-
ings of most of his agogic effects. In particular, rubato
effects are nowadays so exaggerated by pianoforte vir-
tuosi that the intimate relations subsisting between
the energy expended (accentuations) and the changing
forms of the soimds (time- values) are utterly distorted.
The pianist, plajring without orchestral accompaniment,
is apt to follow his whim in modifying the sequence
and alternation of time-values and accentuations that
constitute musical rhythm, and by so doing deprives
himself of an infinite variety of means of expression.
Incessant vagaries of rubato, compared with the pro-
cesses of imagination, are as the buzzing of a fly against
the window-pane to the soaring flight of an eagle.

In fact, not only the aesthetic expression inherent in
nuances of time, as conceived by the composer, but
also the dynamic force itself, is thus vitiated — ^nuances
13

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194 Rhythm, Music, and Education

of time and energy being inseparable. Vagaries in the
distribution of sound-durations can only attain aesthetic
value by contrast, at the right moment, with an ordered
interpretation scrupulously observant of the relations
in time between the various sounds — ^just as the aesthetic
value of a crescendo and a diminuendo is only established
by reference to a piano or a forte, and the emotional
value of a modulation depends on its contrast with a
fixed and persistent tonal state.

Would not the most indulgent of critics reprimand
a pianist who exercised his humour for fantasy to the
point of sprinkling a melody in C major with profuse
sharps and flats, ''padding" simple chords, or trans-
posing minor into major themes? And yet we could
name a host of critics, including the most exacting, who
neither condemn, nor even mention, the complete dis-
regard by most pianists of time nuances! This is an
inconsistency only explicable in the light of the igno-
rance of most musicians of the physical laws which
govern agogic shading. This ignorance is, fortunately,
likely to be dispelled in the near future, now that so
many thinking musicians are coming to realise the im-
portance of the active and receptive functions of the
motor organism, and the existence of natural laws
governing the relations between movement and sound —
the two mutually fundamental elements in the musical
expression of human emotions.

We are in the habit of jotting down fleeting impres-
sions, of sketching instead of finishing compositions,
of merely noting instead of arranging rhythms. The
cult of picturesque details has supplanted that of form
prop^. Educationists should bear in mind that»

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Rhythm and Creative Imagination 195

while rhythm plays a preponderant r61e in art, serving
.to tmite all manifestations of beauty and animating
them with the same throbbing life, it should constitute
a no less important factor in general education, co-
ordinating all the spiritual and corporal movements of
the individual, and evolving in the latter a mental
state in which the combined vibrations of desires and
powers are associated in perfect harmony and balance.
"Only the soul can guide the body, along the path the
mind has traced for it."

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CHAPTER X

RHYTHM AND GESTURE IN MUSIC DRAMA—
AND CRITICISM (1910-1916)

The Individual Artist

The trinity of word, gesture, and music — MusicaUsing of
musdes — Stairs and inclines — Adolphe Appia's method —
Nuances of movements — The training of audiences — Relation
between musical and corporal dynamics — Nudity and the
purification of bodily interpretations.

Criticism

Universal ignorance of the laws of plastic interpretation —
Orchestration of the human body — Conventions and inconsis-
tencies— Vanity of impressionistic judgmerUs — The rdle of the
critic.

The Crowd

Passion-plays in Switzerland throughout the ages — Open-
air festivals — The rdle of the crowd in music drama — The
laws of collective gesture — Relations between the crowd and the
individual artist — Mass dynamism — The polyrhythm of
crowds — The training of a chorus — Gesture and lighting.

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CHAPTER X

RHYTHM AND GESTURE IN MUSIC DRAMA—
ANDCRITiaSM (19IO-I916)

The Individual Artist

Since Richard Wagner (following Gluck) prescribed
for lyric drama the classic trinity of word, gesture, and
music, and set himself to define the ideal method of
interpreting his works, and, like Gr6try,.to lay the
foundations of a school of lyric-dramatic art, the pub-
lic, under the influence of its critics and amateurs, has
concluded that, to the everlasting glory of the contem-
porary stage, sound, movement, and speech have been
definitely united in the creation of an art-form analogous
to the Greek Orchesis, and that all goes well in the best
of aU possible worlds.

It may nevertheless be worth while to inquire whether
the mere presence of the three classic elements in a
lyric work suflBces to establish their tmity. Actually a
cursory analysis of modem lyric works — including those
of Wagner — must bring home to the most optimistic
that the classic tmity has not been achieved, and is
incapable of achievement under existing conditions of
musical education.

To tmite word, gesture, and music, it is not enough
that the music should be intimately allied to the word.

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200 Rhythm, Music, and Education

nor that the word and the gesture should correspond.
It is necessary in addition that physical movements
and sound movements, the musical and the plastic
elements, should be co-ordinated. If we now examine
either the works or the productions of the modem
theatre, we shall find ourselves forced to admit that
this last union has not yet been effected.

Just as verbal expression, the poetic interpretation
of the text, demands precise and definite gestures, so
musical expression, constituting the atmosphere of the
piece, exacts of the actor a similar and absolute phjrsical
submission to the rhythm that produces it. Every
movement of musical rhythm should evoke in the body
of the interpreter a corresponding muscular movement;
every mood expressed in sound should determine on
the stage an appropriate attitude; every orchestral
nuance, every crescendo, diminuendo, stringendo or
raUentando should be impressed on the interpreter and
expressed by him, as occasion demands. I say, as
occasion demands, because, naturally, as the purpose
of the text does not require an appropriate gesture to
each word, so not every musical rhythm calls for its
physical interpretation. It is, however, essential that
it should produce a mental attitude, that it should
develop in the mind of the interpreter a particular
image that shall animate his whole organism, if we
really wish to see the ideal unity effected — ^if we wish
to bring music into the heart of life. We have only to
visit any of our principal opera houses and study the
play of the performers, while listening to the orchestra,
to perceive at once that there exists a barrier between
the prche§tr^ ^d th^ stage, and th^t the Qrcb^r^

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Rhythm and Gesture ^i

music acts as a mere accompaniment to the song or to
the attitude of the actors, and does not really enter
into them and inspire their movements. The music
rises, swells, breaks out in grandiose resonance; the
gesture either does not follow the crescendo, or does
not convey it to the spectator. The music subsides,
dies away, whispers and murmurs as in a dream — ^the
attitude on the stage reveals a musctdar tension which
is fortissimo/ Even musical rhythms that characterise
not soul-movements, but simple motions of the body,
such as walking or running or sudden arrests or starts,
are not realised on the stage — or are realised incorrectly,
which is worse ! Certainly there exist opera singers who
feel the necessity of this tmion of gesture and music,
and who endeavour to express rhythms of sound by mus-
cular rhythms. But they do not succeed for want of a
special training — as necessary to this end as is a special
finger training to enable a musician to express himself
through the medium of an instrument. Not every
musician requires to express music in movement, but
it is obvious that an opera singer, to be a complete
artist, must possess this faculty of "realising" rhjrthms
plastically. Unfortunately, if his education is incom-
plete, that of his public is much more so; that is why
so many non-rhythmic singers attain success in spite
of this deficiency. It will not always be so; a new point
of view is already in course of evolution; the study of
the relations between time and space is engaging the
attention of numerous aestheticians, and the time is
not far distant when lack of rhythm will be counted
as serious a flaw in a singer's equipment as tonal
inaccuracy.

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202 Rhythm, Music, and Education

Before dedicating one's body to the service of art,
it should be deemed necessary to perfect its mechanism,
to develop its capacities, and to correct its shortcomings.
It is not enough that these capacities function intui-
tively, as is the case with many gifted individuals; it
is necessary in addition that they should be exercisable
consciously, and not depend on momentary nervous
impulses. Again, it is essential that the nervous system
itself should be trained and regulated so as to give the
brain complete liberty of control over muscular move-
ments. All movements of the body, its gait, gestures,
and attitudes, should be studied not only on a flat
surface, such as the boards of a stage, but on different
planes, on incUnes of different degrees (where practic-
able), and on staircases,' in such a way that the body
may familiarise itself with space, its plastic manifesta-
tions adapting themselves to the material conditions
dictated by the action, and eventually imposing on the
painter a new conception and treatment of scenery.
Finally the organism should become an instrument of
musical resonance so vibrant and of such susceptibility
as to be capable of spontaneously transposing into

' Adolphe Appia first gave me the idea of evolutions on a staircase
and the Russian painter Salzmann designed for my exercise a highly
ingenious set of units, whereby a whole series of practicable staircases
could easily and speedily be constructed. Distinguished producers
such as Reinhardt, Granville Barker, and Gamier came later to adopt
our methods, but only Gamier appears to me to have utilised them to
really vital effect. Nowadays one sees staircases on all stages, but
the producers do not know what to do with them, nor can the actors
either perform or repose on them with ease. Appia wrote: "Stairs by
their straight Unes and breaks maintain the necessary contrast between
the curves of the body and the sinuous lines of its evolutions; their
practical uses <^ering at the same time distinct facilities of expression."

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Rhythm and Gesture 203

attitude and gestures all the aesthetic emotions pro-
voked by sotind rhythms.

In his Mise en seine du drame Wagnirien (pp.
44-45) Adolphe Appia, prophesjdng in 1895 the col-
laboration of rhythm and drama, quotes two significant
details from the representation of the third act, of the
Walkjrrie.

"Wotan arrives in a terrific cyclone that subsides
as he reaches the summit. The Walkjrries have con-
cealed Brunnhilde among them and seek to appease
their father. The musical passage is quite short, but
the incomparable poljrphony is meant to be accompan-
ied by an action that impresses it on the eye, without,
however, obliging the maidens to separate from each
other. It is effected by a light cotmterpoint, in which
the successive entries mark the timid supplication in a
highly individual manner; each Walkyrie should time
her entry a beat in advance of the score. The last bars
expand irresistibly; the vocalists should interlace their
movements corresponding to the score, and, by way of
further accentuation, the whole group extended brfore
Wotan might straighten itself and recoil on the hard chord
that recalls the abrupt voice of the God. One cannot,
in this scene, carry too far the minute search for new
musical developments."

It would appear to be easy to train artists according
to these indications; but this is not the case. The
clearest comprehension by the actors of these directions
by no means assures their execution. To make with
apparent ease a step in advance of a particular note,
he must have gone through a whole series of exercises
in advancing and halting, aiming at the acquirement of

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204 Rhythm, Musici and Education

the various kinds of balance of the body, pose of the
feet, and muscular innervation of the legs necessary to
interpret the different sound tempi in all their shades.
The gait of the actor must accord with the musical
movement, and the rhythm of his steps must fall quite
naturally into the rhythm of the sounds. The most
perfect musician may be absolutely incapable of effect-
ing a raUentando, accelerando^ or rubato in waUdng,
corresponding to the acceleration, abatements, and
fluctuations of his musical imagination. Nor would he
be able to change his attitude in a given time — say,
over a crotchet or a quaver — ^without having studied
plastic anacrusis, that is, the laws of preparation of
movements. He must next practise movements of the
arm in all degrees of rapidity and energy, first simulta-
neous and corresponding movements of both arms,
then the same movements executed by the arms in
diflEerent directions — ^finally diflferent movements simul-
taneously, one arm, for example, making an angular,
the other a circular, movement. In this form of exer-
cise, movements of apparent simplicity prove exceed-
ingly difficult to execute. To raise one arm in sixteen
beats of an adagio while half lowering the other in the
same space of time requires a perfect acquaintance
with every shade of mtiscular innervation and, in addi-
tion, considerable practice, before this double action
will convey an impression of naturalness and ease.
To one practised in the correlating of movements in
time and space, the sight of a gesttire completed before
or after the beat of a musical rh3rthm produces a posi-
tive aesthetic pain. It is not until the arms are capable
of being moved with complete freedom that their

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Rhythm and Gesture 205

movements can be combined with leg movements. An
infinite number of combined exercises have been con-
trived, the study of which must inevitably produce
harmony of all habitual movements, thereby conducing
to grace, which is only another word for ease and natu-
ralness, and which is attainable only through knowledge
of our physical possibilities. The factor co-ordinating
arm and leg movement is respiration. Singers confine
their use of the diaphragm to the production of the
necessary breath for the larynx, and yet breathing is
not only an invaluable medium of physical balance, but,
in addition, a highly powerful agent of dramatic ex-
pression, and apart from the rapid movements of costal
respiration by which our lyric artists so frequently
express their emotion in love scenes, there exist a whole
host of other movements of the torso, produced by the
breath, complementary to the movements of arms,
legs, and head. The latter should also be submitted to
special exercises, all the more so since vocal exercises
by no means encourage suppleness in the neck. . . .
But the mastery of body movements constitutes a mere
virtuosity, unless those movements are employed to
help out facial expression. The same gesture may
express ten different sentiments according as the eye
gives the due. The correlating of body movements
with facial play must, then^ also be made the subject
of a special training; but this should not be under-
taken until repeated exercises have brought music into
direct commimication with the organism — ^vibrations
of soimd evoking analogous vibrations in the tissues
and the nervous system, which the body, susceptible
of musical emotions, has learned to transform into

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^o6 Rhythm, Music, and Education

plastic emotions and to realise aesthetically. The
mechanism of the body is nothing imtil it has become
subservient to the sensibilities, the development of
which a diligent study of the translation of musical
rhythms into physical movements is almost certain to
promote.

As soon as interpreters have learnt to express with
their bodies every nuance of the orchestra, it must
inevitably follow, that, after some hesitation and mis-
imderstanding, the public will come to appreciate the
lyrico-plastic unity thereby achieved, and will ifeel the
necessity of initiating itself into this new medium of
interpretation by an identical training. The time is
near when the, as it were, antinomy that subsists to-
day between plastic rhythms and sotmd rhythms will
shock an audience in the same way as a false note in a
chorus, or a wrong beat in an orchestra. A new men-
tality will evolve, the old tastes will change, the tradi-
tional conception of scenic exigencies will be modified,
and eventually people will wonder how it was ever
possible that such a divorce should have been allowed
to subsist between the stage and the orchestra, between
musical conceptions and physical realisations. Com-
posers will then abandon current dramatic forms to
adopt others more conformable to truth and nature.
They will no longer permit their imaginations to give
to gestural and ocular expressions and attitudes a
musical form of which the rhythm and the movement
are incapable of plastic realisation. Custom has trained
them to regard all music without words as the ex-
pression of inner feelings. Their imagination would

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Rhythm and Gesture 207

often suggest more effective interpretations if they
cotild command a visual representation of them in ges-
ture and facial play, in place of this accepted suppres-
sion. Muscular dynamics must render musical rhythms .
visible, and musical dynamics plastic rhythms musical.
Gesture must define musical emotion and call up its
image. And to that end we must educate otu* bodies
in rhythm and by rhythm. It is not necessary that
we should be perfectly formed : the essential is that our
movements should be harmonised, and that our habit-
ual motions should be refined; in short, that we should
be artists. We have all of us muscles, reason, and
volition; consequently we are aU equal before Rhythm.
We must vocalise our movements and establish a com-
munion between them and music. To tiiat end it is
necessary that we should learn to know our bodies,
and that is why, without sharing the views of aesthe-
ticians who, in respect of costtmie, advocate complete
rettun to the customs of Greek antiquity, I myself
favour for my plastic studies a return to quasi-nudity
when exercising in private. Nudity provides not only
a medium of control indispensable for purposes of
physical expression, but is in addition an aesthetic ele-
ment inducing the respect for the body that animated
the great Greek philosophers. In proportion as the
idea of sex subsides in the fervour of the artist, and in
the passion for complete absorption in beauty and
truth of expression, so our bodies take on new life, and
we feel lack of respect for nudity to be a sin against
the spirit. Once our operatic singers have learnt to
understand the intricate mechanism of their movements
and the intimate relations between their bodies, their

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308 Rhythm, Music, and Education

minds, their desires, and their aesthetic instincts, they
will emancipate themselves from the prejudices at
present enctmibering them, thanks to their education
and heredity, and will regard their bodies as mediums
of elevation — as instrtmients of pure art and beauty.
No longer will the Philistines snigger at the sight of
Isadora Duncan dancing with bare legs. Thenceforth
critics will have to insist on the yotmg Siegfried dis-
carding his miserable pink tights, and on the Rhine
Daughters assiuning the authentic garb of water-
sprites. Purified by art, we shall see in the body the
collaborator of conscience, an agent of noble will and
pure imagination, an instnmient of wisdom, beauty,
art, and truth. The interpreter will no longer seek art
and beauty outside himself, he will have to induce
beauty and truth to descend into him, to dwell with
him, to become an integral element in his organism.
Such are the benefits I anticipate from the cult of
rhythm, as a result of which authors and actors,
repudiating the old worn scenic conventions, will re-
cover the purity of plastic sensation, will ally in their
art the sensibiUty of the musician with that of the
sculptor and painter, and will free themselves — ^thanks
to a real education, on principles pure as nature and
truth — ^from the tyranny of meaningless virtuosity,
lying gestures, and intellectual perversities.

Criticism

The progress of the art of gesture is unfortunately
retarded by the ignorance of critics touching the powers
of expression possessed by the human body. Certainly

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Rhythm and Gesture 209

it is possible to appreciate the merits of a symphony
without being capable of playing all the instruments of
the orchestra — and to recognise the merit of a singer
or pianist without having studied singing or the piano.
It is, moreover, true that sound visual, intellectual, and
artistic faculties may make up for want of technical
knowledge, in criticising hxmian gesture, whether indi-
vidual or collective. But the opinions of people tmin-
f ormed as to the multiple resources of the human frame
can never have other than a subjective value, and should
not have the power of influencing the education of either
artist or spectator. A musical critic can admittedly in-
terest the public in recording the impression produced on
him by such and such orchestral work, although he un-
derstands only approximately the mechanism of each
instrument — but he will be unable to explain why cer-
tain things displease him without an appreciation of
the tone and character of the different agents of sound,
an acquaintance with the laws that regulate the art of
grouping instnunents, and a knowledge of the essential
principles of musical construction.

Hxmian gesture and its orchestration conform to
elementary principles of natiffe, dynamic, rhythmic,
and agogic, which it is absolutely necessary to under-
stand before one is justified in formulating a decision
as to their artistic worth. Criticism of a work or its
interpretation, in so far as these are the direct product
of emotion and temperament, can only be of relative
value. On the other hand, that which is the result of in-
tellectual qualities, sense of form, intuition of dynamic
or rhythmic effects, can be analysed. But to be in a

position to analyse it, one must know something of the
14

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^10 Rhythm, Music, and Education

matter in question. By so much as the subjective
opinion of a great creative artist interests us from the
psychological point of view, by so much the impressions
of a negative spirit, a critic who has never made any
personal contribution to art, leave us cold. On the
other hand, we can take an interest in an analysis based
on first-hand knowledge. Every human body comprises
more numerous potential orchestral effects (concatena-
tion, juxtaposition, opposition of gestures and attitudes,
and changes while stationary or in step) than the most
complex symphonic body. To what extent, and in
what manner, could and should this human orchestra
ally its rhythms to those of the orchestra of sound?
That is the question we have to consider.

No musical critic would hold it right for the clarinets
to play in a different key from the rest of the orchestra,
or for a pianist to execute his part in a concerto in a
different style from that adopted by the instruments
accompanying him. . . . Yet we do not find two
critics in a himdred commenting on the confusions of
style, time, phrasing, and shading that may persist be-
tween the movements of a corps de baUetf or of a solo
dancer professing to interpret a musical piece.

Not only is their eye so accustomed to the regular
arm movements, extended, contracted, undulatory,
and sinuous, that constitute the means of expression
possessed by ballet dancers, that any really vital ges-
ture, any effect of dynamic muscularity offends them
aesthetically; but their minds have so deliberately ac-
cepted the disharmony between the physical move-
ments and the sound rhythms, that their ears ix)sitively
cease to listen to the music once their eyes compel them

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Rhythm and Gesture 211

to foflow the spectacle, and vice versa. It seems to
them quite natural that on the stage the htunan body
should be perpetually trying to repudiate the laws of
gravity, that the ambition of the dancer should be to
imitate the bird, instead of to transfigure the man, to
produce the picturesque and artificial, instead of to en-
noble and refine the gestures of nattu-al life. We still
look back with bewilderment and regret to interpreta-
tions (quite pretty from the pictorial point of view) of
classical and modem compositions, applauded by
capable musicians who simply did not perceive the
abyss created by the dancers between the orchestral and
physical S3miphonies. The truth is, musicians have no
conception of the capacities of the htunan body, and
neither their sight nor their muscular sense is suffi-
ciently acute to warn them of the errors of style com-
mitted, and of the nuances disregarded. The trouble is
that so many critics, imagining themselves to possess
intuitive knowledge, consider physical movement of
such secondary importance as a medium of artistic
expression, that they do not hesitate to hold forth ex
cathedra on texts of which they do not even suspect the
meaning ! " How few people," said Vauvenargues, "are
capable of comprehending every side of a question!
There, it seems to me, is the most common source of
human error."

Each time we attend a display of dancing, we are
staggered by the incoherence of the spectators' opinions,
and the contradictions of their sentiments. Those who
object in the concert hall to the technical acrobatics
of instruments, applaud it in the dancer. Those who
oppose transcriptions and arrangements of classical

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212 Rhythm, Music, and Education

pieces, approve the most horrible travesties of them as
perform^ by the artistes of the ballet. Those again
who complain of the inadequate delicacy of touch of
certain pianists, pass, without turning a hair, the crude,
exaggerated, and frantic gestures of opera singers!
Others who are dependable authorities on the pictorial
or sculptural representation of the human form go into
raptures over the affectations and abnormal disloca-
tions of living and breathing bodies. Finally, there are
critics, and these are the worst, so perverted in taste
and steeped in the artifices of conventional choreog-
raphy, that, far from recognising the abstmiity of these
displays, they remain impervious to the efforts of pro-
gressive artists to reform the dance as a simple and
natural expression of emotion. Once these professional
critics have written of a dancer that he has grace, a
good carriage, balance, and temperament, they have
said everjrthing! It never occurs to them to consider
the degree of sjnnpathy he has shown for the musical
thought it was his business to interpret. And yet as
much importance should be attached to the processes of
plastic interpretation as to those of musical execution.

But there, again, what divergences of opinion these
musical critics exhibit! According as nature has made
them "rational," "emotional,'* or "imaginative," and
psychologists such as Dr. Charles Odier can classify
them as technicians and theorists on the one hand,
sentimentalists and emotionalists on the other (or
sub-classify the "imaginatives" as "rationalists," "im-
pressionists," and "intuitionists") — ^the works and
interpretations are perceived and analysed by them
in a hundred and one different ways. Fortimately, the

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Rhythm and Gesture 213

value of a musical criticism does not depend on the
nature of its conclusions, but on the simplicity and
sincerity of the musician who makes it.

There is no inferior art of criticism, but there are
inferior methods of practising that art. Every man
who wishes to devote his life to the public appraisement
of artistic works and interpretations should make it
his business to be well informed and to move with the
times. Unfortunately, too few critics appreciate the
importance of their vocation. Many of them imagine
that their critical faculties are definitely formed, and
that they have nothing more to learn. Some apparently
consider their task to consist in picking out, and ex-
posing indiscriminately to public ridicule, defects in
the works of aU kinds presented to them. It should
rather consist in trying to get to the bottom of these
works and considering to what extent they may, in
spite of their defects, be made to serve the purposes
of art. As La Rochefoucauld put it, "a sensible per-
son sees things as they require to be seen. He gives
them their own value, and causes them to exhibit to
him the side from which they may be viewed to best
advantage. ..." There are few such "sensible
people" in the realm of criticism. To say "such and
such a piece pleases or displeases me," without fiuther
elucidation, is the prerogative of the least educated
music-lover; it is the critic's function to fathom the
author's motives, and to explain them to his readers,
without stressing his own personal preferences. From
this point of view, Robert Schumann, who could "dis-
cover" a genius of so antipathetic a tendency as
Berlioz, proved himself a model critic; while the ar-

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214 Rhythm, Music, and Education

tides of that disinterested enthusiast, our contemporary
Camille Mauclair, at once critic and creator, guided
alike by principle and impulse, command the respect
of artists of the most divergent tendencies, and exercise
a thoroughly wholesome influence on the progress of
art, as a whole.

The practice of censuring any artistic conception
that does not happen to conform to their particular
temperament does not commend itself to those who
feel it their vocation to ctdtivate the tastes of dilet-
tantes tmacquainted with the diversity of musical form,
and unconscious of its a£Snity with the multiple forms
of emotional life. But those critics who aspire to pro-
duce work of lasting educative and persuasive value,
find it necessary, before hazarding an opinion on a work
of unfamiliar character, to make specially careful
inquiry as to its "intentions," and as to the qualifica-
tions of its creator.

It is easy enough to pronounce a hasty judgment,
based on one's education or one's particular pre-
ferences, but this rudimentary mode of informing
the public is more suitable for "reporters" of art than
for conscientious and sensitive analjrsts, concerned to
appreciate the point of view of the creator. Unfortu-
nately, with three-quarters of the writers on musical
matters, book learning and an ambition to shine in the
public eye by a display of erudition or cheap paradoxes,
take the place of the real requisites of a serious and
conscientious critic — a, passion for all forms of artistic
endeavour, curiosity as to individual modes of expres-
sion, a capacity to assimilate new forms of art and to
extract the essence of the ideas underlying them, and

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Rhythm and Gesture 215

the will to withdraw from one's own personality in
order to commune with other and different personalities.

It does not follow, however, because we refuse to be
impressed by slaves of a school or style who condemn
every work that does not conform to it, that we
have any more respect for those who carry eclec-
ticism to an extreme and set themselves to discover
beauty where it does not exist. Only it is more common
to find a critic failing to find beauty in a work because
he does not want to find it, or through lack of beauty
in himself. Instinct is not everything — ^the faculty
and the desire to analyse would modify many of the
"instinctive" prejudices of those who undertake the
task of enlightening public opinion on the productions
of classical or contemporary music. In the words of
that shrewd artist, Jean Hur6: "The art of criticism
consists in recognising beauty wheresoever and in
whatever diverse forms it may conceal itself." And,
before him, Leonardo da Vind wrote: "Love is bom
of Knowledge."

It is all important that the majority of critics should
agree as to the essential qualities required for the art
of dancing, and the principle that should underlie the
various techniques involved. It is a matter of the
reciprocal influence of rhythms and feelings in sound
and plastic; a constant exchange of psychic currents
and sensorial repercussions. There may be a diversity
in the external means of expression, dependent on the
individualities of the executants, but all dancers who
are real artists — no matter how divergent their manners
of bodily expression — ^must be guided by the same
motive, the interpretation of music. The soul of music

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2i6 Rhythm, Music, and Education

radiates, in an equal degree of intensity, from all dan-^
oers worthy of the name of artist; but just as a focus
of light makes a different impression, according to the
degree of atmospheric resistance, and the processes of
sifting and reverberation necessitated by the various
obstacles interposed between it and our eyes — so the
radiating influence of vital music may appeal to spec-
tators in different aspects, arising from the diversity
of the physical agents of response in the dancer, whether
in the structure of his limbs, or in his nervous system
or temperament. To the spectator accustomed to the
varieties of physical mechanism, these differences in
types of gestures and attitudes will not matter. What-
ever the imaginative variations in the embodiment of
musical ideas and feelings, he will be able to recognise
whether the latter have really inspired the corporal
movements, and to distinguish fusion from mere juxta-
position, creation from imitation, sincere synrhythm
from vulgar synchronism, spontaneous response from
considered adaptation. Every musical work comprises
an element of inspiration, and another of thematic
development and architecture. This latter element
depends on the intellect and physique, and may be
expressed differently by dancer interpreters, according
as their aptitudes or understandings have formed their
various techniques. But the inspiration present at the
creation of the music should be revived in the transpo-
sition of musical rhythms into movements in space; the
same breath should animate both soimd and corporal
expression. A dancer of the old ballet school should
be able to express the soul of music as faithfully through
the medium of the traditional processes to which his

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Rhj^m and Gesture 217

limbs are accustomed, as an Isadora Duncan by her
immobility, or a Sakharoff by his polymobile effects,
provided thai soul has been absorbed by each of them.

In the same way the really artistic spectator will not
allow himself to be influenced by his personal predilec-
tion for a particular technique, any more than an ideal
audience of absolute music will be biassed by tastes in
harmony, construction, or orchestration. We cannot,
of course, control our likes or dislikes, but these should
not intrude upon a general appreciation, relating to the
intrinsic value and sincerity of the artistic manifesta-
tion in question. Moreover, the mastery of technique
being a sine qua non for purposes of representation of a
work, we must be careful not to confuse idiosyncrasies
of artistic style with that mere poverty of expressive
resources which, alas ! is the idiosyncrasy of so many so-
called artists. One cannot construct a work of art on
inspiration alone; the most profound thought may be
distorted by deficiencies in the vehicle of its extemalisa-
tion. That is why an artist should never obsess him-
self with any partictdar method, but should be con-
stantly experimenting with those which have not come
instinctively to him. And the same applies to a critic,
whose analytical faculties should be adaptable to all
forms of style.

The understanding of art does not depend on study
however profound. It is possessed completely only by
those whom taste and temperament have made capable
of responding to elementary emotions, whatever the
nature or construction of the work, its harmonic or tonal
system, or its rhythmic processes. Without this, it is im-
possible either to judge or to understand a piece of music.

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2i8 Rhythm, Music, and Education

We may find evidence of this in the fact that the
interpretation of an unknown piano work will often
seem to reveal to us great interpretative powers in a
pianist whose execution of works with which we are
familiar disappoints or displeases us. Similarly many
conductors who have a prejudice against a particular
piece eventually discover its beauties as a result of
having it repeatedly played to them. May we not con-
clude from this that certain critics who after a first
hearing pronounce such and such a piece to be deficient
in form would change their opinions if they took the
trouble to study the score or even to acquaint them-
selves with the motives of the composer? However,
they prefer to pride themselves on their subjectivity,
forgetting too often that subjectivity is only justifi-
able on the part of powerful and creative personalities.
How many critics are mere ''grousers/' confined to a
negative attitude out of sheer creative impotence ! One
thing or the other: either a critic is himself creative
and accordingly entitled to express preferences and
judgments founded on his temperament, or his function
is that of an observer and recorder, in which case he
must confine himself to studying, comparing, analysing,
and directing attention witiiout drawing conclusions.
To attain the right to deliver arbitrary judgments, he
must be very sure of himself, follow an inflexible line of
conduct, resist the temptation to modify his judgment
out of friendship or personal bias, and keep his own
personality and temperament severely in control.

"Dionjrsius," relates Rabelais, ** would ridictde ped-
ants who are pleased to expose the faults of others
and to ignore their own; musicians whose flutes pre-

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Rhythm and Gesture 219

serve harmony but whose manners do not; rhetoricians
given to expounding justice without practising it."

If dramatic and musical critics instead of constantly
lamenting the deterioration of the art of gesticulation
in drama, would take the trouble to analyse the corre-
lations of gesture with musical rhythm, they would
learn that there exist, apart from individual gestures,
collective gestures, and that without a careful study of
these last no representation involving movements of a
chorus can attain a really musical or artistic character.

The Crowd

The individuals composing a chorus, however gifted,
will never produce a really dramatic effect so long as
they act independently of one another. Forty persons
each making a different gesture, fail to convey the im-
pression of a conmion emotion. Their gestures are
lost in space. It is with the choric element as with
music drama as a whole, each of its elements should be
able to fuse with the others or temporarily withdraw from
them, as necessity dictates. The gesture of a crowd
should be the result of a number of modifications,
almost imperceptible, of a fixed attitude imposed on all
its participants. In modem spoken drama, each indi-
vidual member of a crowd can act independently and
gesticulate according to his fancy to give the impression
of, for example, a festival, a strike, or a battle; . . .
and we regard as masterpieces of this kind the extra-
ordinary productions by M. P. G6mier of The Mer-
chant of Venice and Antony and Cleopatra, But
in lyric drama the crowd has an entirely different

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220 Rhythm, Music, and Education

function. It must express the emotions of a whole
commimity, to which end a very special process of
training is necessary.

This aesthetic education of a chorus, the study of the
laws which govern collective gesture and movement,
and which form an integral part of any system of rhyth-
mic exercises, deserves tiie special consideratipn of all my
compatriots who are gymnasts, singers, or sportsmen.
More than in any other country, in Switzerland popu-
lar spectacles involve the participation of numerous
supers, and the happy influence of these "Pestspiele,"
to employ the German term, has long been recognised
by our psychologists, pedagogues, and even theologians.

Prom the twelfth century onwards, the Swiss or-
ganised performances of Passion plays to which actors
and audience repaired in procession, singing and danc-
ing. These performances originally took place in
churches, later they were carried into the open air.
In certain cases the spectators took an active part in
them and we have an account of one in which the Pi-
late, reviled by two hundred actors, with diflSculty
escaped with his life.

In the fifteenth century, the colleges organised dra-
matic fgtes under the influence of the humanist plays
of Terence, and the performances of Passion plays in-
creased. At Lucerne in partictdar they involved the
participation of himdreds of people; at Einsiedeln, the
audience sang in common with the chorus; at Berne
the poet and painter, Nicholas Manuel, produced panto-
mimes and carnival plays; at Zurich, Josias Murer, in
his Siege of Babylon, and Halzwarth in his Saul, brought

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Rhythm and Gesture 221

"a whole army" into play. Indeed, pitched battles
were fought in the course of the action, and the text
indicates that in the last act ''the populace, appeased,
with one accord ceases fighting, Ues down, and falls
asleep." There existed even at that period, then, a
system of rhythm applied to crowds. The stage direc-
tions are highly significant in this respect. The trum-
pets sound, the populace fights, attacks, retires, argues,
murmurs, takes oaths, dances, and forms processions,
thus playing in the piece a rdle as important as that
of the leading actors.

These traditions have not been lost. If the colleges of
music have decayed, and the mystery plays have prac-
tically disappeared, we may set against them those
great patriotic festivals of extraordinary vitality and
beauty, organised by the cantons on the centenaries
of their entry into the confederation. Phenomena of
nature have also inspired some wonderful demonstra-
tions such as the unforgettable festival of winegrowers.
We may therefore pride ourselves that our country
possesses a natural instinct for grouping crowds and
making them live in dramatic action. In the open air,
under the glare of the sun, in the prodigious framework
provided by a glorious landscape and sky, in scenes
where nature herself furnishes every gradation of
height, depth, and density, processions pass, dance-
drcles are formed, men and women fall on their knees
in devotion, without requiring any partictdar technique
of representation. But in a restricted area everything
is different, and the framework of a space artificially
confined creates special conditions of movement and
grouping. Would our Swiss artists but undertake the

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222 Rhythm, Music, and Education

interesting task of studying the relations of defined and
lighted space with musical rhjrthm and physical move-
ment, they might divert the dramatic art of Switzerland
into an entirely new channel. The works are there —
only the stage-technique is wanting. The impressive
last scene in Chavannes' GuiUaume le Fou signally
failed to produce the requisite eflFect at the Comedy
Theatre owing to the producer regarding the chorus of
Swiss peasants as an assemblage of isolated men, each
retaining his individuality, instead of treating them
as one individual, a synthetic entity. Let us, then,
consider the most practicable method of bringing the
crowd into direct relations with the underlying motives
of Ijrric drama by means of a refining process applied
to its rhythmic potentialities.

We have all of us admired, at gynmastic displays, the
wonderful living picture formed by hundreds of young
men moving in step to music; the synchronism of their
gestures produces a sensation at once emotive and Aes-
thetic, and yet these gymnasts are quite unconscious of
creating an artistic eflFect. Their sole aims are discipline
and hygiene. They cultivate movement for its own
sake, and give no thought to it as a medium for the
expression of emotion. On the stage, in Ijrric drama,
the crowd of supers also cultivates collective gesture,
but in the interests of ideas. It sustains a double
r61e, not only supporting the dramatic action, but, in
addition (as in the plays of iEschylus), conmiimicating
the thoughts of the poet or expressing the emotions of
the spectators, thereby forming an intermediary be-
tween the stage and the auditorium. When it plays an

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Rhythm and Gesture 223

active part in the drama its movements constitute
gestures of action. When it bears the r61e of confidant
of the hero or of mouthpiece of the religious or philo-
sophic truths contained in the play, its gesture partakes
of the nature of music.

The collective gesture of action may consist simply
of a repetition by each member of the chorus of an
individual movement prepared in advance, or even in
the merging of a ntmiber of individual gestxires inde-
pendent of each other. But where a musical gesture
has to be made with the object of indicating a situation
or creating an atmosphere, these individual gestures
must be unified, each member of the chorus discarding
his personality to subordinate himself to the whole.
In other words, the producer must orchestrate the
diverse movements of the actors in such a way as to
obtain a unity of collective gesture. Before studying
the laws by which this orchestration may be effected
simply, clearly, and naturally, yet in such a way that
these skilfully contrived collective movements retain
an essentially htmian character, we must first under-
stand the laws which establish the harmony of indi-
vidual gestures.

No physical movement has any expressive virtue in
itself. Expression by gesture depends on a succession
of movements and on a constant care for their harmonic,
dynamic, and static rhythm. The static is the study
of the laws of balance and proportion — the dynamic
that of the means of expression. According to Pran-
gois del Sarte, dynamic harmony depends on the rela-
tion that subsists between all agents of gesture. Just

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224 Rhjrthm, Music, and Education

as in music there are consonant and dissonant chords,
so in mimic art we find consonant and dissonant
gestures. ** Consonant" movements are produced by
the perfect co-ordination between limbs, head, and
torso, the fundamental agents of gesture. Exactly the
same is the case when it is a question of harmonising
different motive elements of a crowd.

A crowd may act either independently or conjointly
with a soloist. In the former case, it may express an
afiSrmative or a negative attitude, showing hesitation or
the reverse; when acting with a soloist, it introduces
an element of opposition or encouragement or even of
argument (that is to say, a mixture of acquiescence and
resistance).

In the collective movement of a crowd we have to
observe both changes and successions of attitudes.
Just as, in the individual, changes in the position of an
arm or leg may become unaesthetic when accompanied
by superfluous movements of the shoulders or in-
congruous facial play, so also changes of gesture and
attitudes, while walking or running, of a collection of
individuals, will produce a harmonious effect on the spec-
tator only by a subordination of each individual gesture
in favour of the whole. The crowd must be considered
by the producer as an entity, a single individual, with
many limbs. The simultaneous execution of individual
gestures will not of itself express the collective emotions
of a crowd. Fifty persons slowly raising their arms
will only produce the effect of a single strong line. In
order to convey the impression of a whole people rais-
ing its arms, the gesture of each isolated actor should
carry on the gesture commenced by his neighbour and

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a
c/3

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Rhythm and Gesture 225

transmit it to a third in ptirstiance of a continuous
movement. Similarly where it is desired to manifest
an impetuous tendency, a single step forward taken by
each member of the chorus will by no means suggest
the advance of a whole crowd. To accomplish this, the
rear members must remain stationary, other members
taking a slight step, others again a longer, and yet
others more than one step forward in such a way that
the whole space is occupied and, in consequence, the
group is extended.

It is the same with dynamic gesture. The impression
of a common release of energy does not depend on the
amount of muscular effort contributed by each indi-
vidual member. An effect of crescendo could be ob-
tained without any increase of energy on the part of
individuals by a simple shrinkage of the group analo-
gous to that of the contraction of a muscle, or, on the
other hand, an extension which will cause it to occupy
a larger area. Generally speaking, dynamic effects are
obtained by modifications of space, and emotive effects
by interruptions of continuous symmetrical formations.
A single person rising gently out of a kneeling group
will produce a stronger impression than if the whole rose
at the same moment. The effect will be increased ten-
fold if, while he rises, those who remain kneeling bow
themselves to the ground. Just as every gesture of the
arm attains its maximum significance by the opposition
of another limb, so a collective gesture should be set
off by carefully contrived contrasted gestures. An ad-
vancing body will convey a far stronger impression of
its forward direction if simultaneously other bodies are

seen retiring.
15

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226 Rhythm, Music, and Education

Thus pol3n-h3rthm ought to play a highly important
part in the training of stage 'crowds; not alone poly-
rhythm as applied to the chorus, but that formed by
counterpoint between the gestures of the individual
actor and those of the crowd, opposing continuous slow
movement to lively and irregular movement, linking
in canon gestures and steps, producing all manner of
variations of attitude. The study of the relations be-
tween stage gesture and space demonstrates the need
of dispensing with painted representations of artificial
dimensions in favour of real inclines and staircases'
which permit the body to vary its attitudes in pursuit
of balance. But it is not enough to have provided actors
with material conditions more suitable for bodily move-
ment. The essential is to give them the special edu-
cation required for the utilisation of such conditions.
This education must adjust the relations between space
and time; hence it will be essentially musical, for
music is the only art that teaches time-nuance. The
chorus must reproduce the elementary rhythms of mu-
sic; it must give form and a framework to the indi-
vidual actions of the protagonists. In an orchestral
ensemble, full freedom is allowed the individual mu-
sicians in interpreting the dominant motives of the
work, but their lyric expansion is continually restrained
and toned down by the necessity of respecting the gen-
eral form and of preserving the balance of the interpre-
tation as a whole. As we have said, it is the chorus
that creates the atmosphere in which the individual
artists perform; the latter must obviously be permitted
freedom of individual action, but only so long as they

' See page 209 of this Chapter.

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Rhythm and Gesture 227

keep within the limits imposed by the aesthetic and
emotional atmosphere of the piece. For the rest, each
individual whether in the chorus or outside it must
sacrifice his particular idiosyncrades of expression in
the interests of the general impression; the crowd re-
taining its special fimction of pointing the similarity
and contrasts between the imaginary lives of the dramatis
persofUB and the ordinary lives and rhythm of the
spectators.

The special training for choruses proposed by Appia
twenty years ago and since practised by us, aims at
giving performers the necessary flexibility for adapting
themselves spontaneously to all the rhsrthms, however
complex, called into play by the inspiration and what
we may be permitted to call the "music" of the crea-
tive imagination. This education should be imposed
likewise on conductors, producers, and specialists in
stage painting and lighting, whose efforts should com-
bine to produce an impression of unity, for they can
remain independent and isolated only at serious risk
to the work as a whole.

Stage lighting does not generally attempt more than
a picturesque imitation of the effects of nattire, hardly
venturing outside the scope of scenic decoration. Its
action, allied with music, however, would create new
and varied possibilities of expression. Discarding its
habitual function of representing the various shades
of day and night, it might participate directly in the
dramatic action, accenttiating sudden changes of feel-
ing, whether imptilses or reactions, permeating the

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228 Rhythm, Music, and Education

decorative space with its emotive qualities. We mig^t
thus be shown a crowd at first enveloped in relative
darkness cutting little by little into a zone of light*
different elements of the crowd disporting themselves
in variously lighted parts until the collective gesture
begun in twilight emerges into the triumphal light of
day.

Light is the sister of music. ... To reinforce the
crescendo of the one by strengthening the other, to
harmonise all their qualities of shading, phrasing, and
rhjrthm, would be to convey to an audience, by a com-
bination of soimd and light, a maximum of aesthetic
sensation and to provide actors with undreamt facilities
of expression. Provided, naturally, that actors should
not come to use these new methods mechanically, that
they should remain real artists. For art is not a par-
ticular method of expressing or transcribing life. It is
"life itself and the means of experiencing it." The
development of sentiment and temperament does not
unfortunately enter into any actual currictdum of artis-
tic education. That is a grave mistake, and it seems
incredible that so few artists and critics should recognise
it. So far as we are concerned, if we earnestly desire
these reforms it is because, to vary the maxim of La
Rochefoucauld, "we know perfectly what we want."

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CHAPTER XI

HOW TO REVIVE DANCING (1912)

Definition of dancing — The so-called ** classical** dance,
and the negation of gravity — Acrobatics of gesture — Metre and
rhythm — Excessive isolation of music from dancing — Dancers
and composers of ballets — Creation of choreographic style —
Phrasing and pace of dancing — Divers exercises infusion of
music and mooing plastic — Gesture and expression — Sincerity
and travesty — Plastic polyrhythm — Fiction and fact in the
theatre — The dance of the future.

2t9

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CHAPTER XI

HOW TO REVIVE DANONG (1912)

Dancing has always, from the time of Ludan to that
of Goethe and Th6ophile Gautier, been described in
dithyrambic and aerial terms, calling up vague dreams
of a supernatural order, in which bodily form, emanci-
pated from the laws of gravity, floated high above the
reahties of human existence. These are not the terms
in which I propose to frame my discourse on the dance
to-day; my object is to determine within what limits
the art of dancing may approach, in its conception and
by purely htunan means, governed by physiological laws,
the art, at present in full course of development, from
which it very directly derives, namely, music.

There exist, and there will always exist, exceptional
beings who, naturally gifted in music and moving plas-
tic, imbued with the joy of living, and permeated with
the profound impression of beauty derived from human
emotions, contrive to render sound rhythms visible,
and to re-create music plastically, without any special
training, guided solely by their intuition, and by the
unconscious subordination of their physical faculties to
their imaginative and emotional capacities. These are
spoilt children of fortune, and education is only wasted
on them.

Numerous normal individuals are attracted to the

331

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232 Rhythm^ Music, and Education

art of choreography by a natural taste for plastic ex-
pression— ^frequently for mere bodily movement — and
devote themselves to dancing, without acquiring the
numerous faculties necessary for the practice of this
independent and profoundly human art. For these,
the training in vogue among dancers is hopelessly inade-
quate. The possibility of raising the standard of this
training is my present concern; only by the raising of
this standard, and, in consequence, this mentality of
dancers, can the dance be restored to its ancient
glories.

I desire to confine myself, in this study of the condi-
tions and possibilities of a renaissance of choreographic
art, to the technical side of my subject, and may be
pardoned, I trust, for omitting the usual metaphorical
and lyrical flourishes.

Dancing is the art of expressing emotion by means of
rhythmic bodily movements. — It is not the function of
rhjrthm to render these movements expressive, but
merely to control and refine them, in fact to make them
artistic, by means of a "conscious change of their
relations" — in Taine's expression. From remotest an-
tiquity we find the dance accompanied by forms of
music, aiming at the rhythmic regulation of gesture,
evolutions, and attitude. This musical accompaniment
may not be strictly necessary, as I will explain in a
moment; but once we admit that the art of dancing
involves a fusion of rhythmic sound and movement —
just as, in lyric art, we find the spoken word allied to
music — ^we are forced to the conclusion that the state
of decadence in which dancing has 3unk in our time i$

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How to Revive Dancing 233

due partly to the exaggerated development of bodily
virtuosity at the expense of expression, and partly to
the absolute negation of the principle of unity of cor-
poral plastic and musical rhythm. '

In stage dancing, as may still be witnessed in the
more important operatic performances, bodily move-
ments tend neither to express feelings nor to transpose
sound movements. They rarely harmonise at all with
the music which is supposed to have evoked them, and
the limbs that execute them are not even themselves in
harmony. The arms ignore the movements of the legs,
or rather they have the air of refusing to follow the latter
in their evolutions. They confine themselves to main-
taining balance, and might as well belong to a different
body. As to the legs, their r61e would appear to consist
in repudiating the weight of the body. One can under-
stand how, by eliminating from their drawings the re-
presentation of certain muscular contractions, painters
contrive to dispel the impression of weight, with the
definite object of conveying an illusion of immateri-
ality (in the ascension of saints, flights of angels, etc.).
But dancers, without knowing it, merely emphasise the
material aspect of the body in seeking to negative its
weight by a series of leaps and bounds. These are only

'Training in (so-called) "classical" ballet dancing aims at the acquire-
ment of a certain number of automatisms, of an acrobatic nature, which
can be Hnked together in various ways. The function of the mattre-de-
ballet consists in adapting them to the divers forms of music they are
intended to interpret. Once dancers have passed their final examina-
tion, their technique is regarded as finished, and any artistic development
considered superfluous. Throughout their career they continue to exhibit
to the public the virtuoso effects which they acquired in their training, and
Wbich constitute what is popularly known »$ the art of chareo^aphy.

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^34 Rh3i:hm, Music, and Education

effected by strenuous efforts of contraction. The im-
materialisation of a body can only be expressed in
dancing by the graduation of dynamic diminuendos in
limbs other than the legs, since the latter, in the course
of the dance, are bound to be contracted. This imma-
terialisation, incidentally, cannot possibly be conveyed
to the audience unless the dancer is sincerely and com-
pletely absorbed in immaterial thoughts. But spiritual
factdties can never be developed normally and com-
pletely in a dancer who specialises in restricted move-
ment and particularly in the realistic movement of
leaping.

A complete thought, an association of ideas and feel-
ings, a "state of soul," can only be interpreted by a
body wholly absorbed in that thought. Just as, in op-
era, mere aimless singing, wholly concerned with virtu-
osity, conveys to artists an impression of insincerity
and futility, so bodily movements, where not inspired
by the need for externalising feelings or interpreting a
really vital piece of music, constitute a form of ridicu-
lous stage acrobatics. Dancing and mimicry, in relation
to the modem stage, have become inferior arts (in
pantomime, gestures serve merely to express conven-
tional feelings and realistic actions) through specialisa-
tion in purely technical effects. Of what avail the vari-
ety of these effects, or even the care of certain dancers
to produce them synchronically with the measured ca-
dences of the orchestra? Not measure, but rhythm,
assures the originality of musical expression. It is
futile for dancers who are not artists to make their
steps exactly correspond with the musical phrasing —
their movements express not music, but merely its

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How to Revive Dancing 235

external forms deprived of all vital imptilse. Rapidity
or slowness of sound or bodily movement can only be-
come expressive when made to represent a state of
concentration or excitement produced by stimulat-
ing and emotive mental images. A slow walk or
a light run can only produce an esthetic impression
where the general pace of the interpreter indicates to
the spectator the relations between the visible move-
ments and the concentrated state of mind and soul that
has evoked them. If the speed of the walk or run be
influenced by immaterial causes, the general attitude
of the whole body will be similarly influenced — which
only proves the insincerity of most of the regular danc-
ing steps, for which only the leg-muscles are required,
and which furnish an analogy to the audacious scale
passages so justly tabooed from modem instrumental
music.

There is no longer any necessity to plead the case for
the old operatic ballet; the case has already been
judged and lost! The public has ceased to take any
interest in choreography, and artists no longer regard
it as an art; but the deplorable part is that neither
artists nor public appreciate the real grotmds of their
contempt. We find them still extolling the merits of
individual dancers of repute, from which we might con-
clude that the decadence of choreographic art lay, in
their opinion, in the inferiority of the standard of danc-
ers. Very few performers are conscious of the discord
existing between musical metre and rhythm, and the
manner of expressing them plastically. The giilf sepa-
rating the orchestra from the stage appears to them a

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236 Rhythm, Music, and Education

normal state. The notable efforts of Isadora Duncan
to revive Greek dancing seems to them all that is re-
quired to reform the art of ballet; they do not notice
that these dances are quite uninfluenced by music, and
could dispense with music altogether! Others — includ-
ing quite well-known artists and critics — preserve, or
affect to preserve, an unshaken confidence in the choreo-
graphic traditions, despite the complete divorce of these
from their musical principles, which are based on a
sincere research for natural musical expression. In
short, the dancing public of to-day appears to me in an
analogous situation to an audience at the opera that
did not notice when (i) the rhythms of the vocal tert
did not correspond with the musical rhythms, supposed
to give them their value, and (2) the artists sang in a
different key and time from the orchestra.

Wagner strenuously combated the lack of tmity be-
tween poesy and music, and accomplished something
of a revolution. In the same way, artists, conscious of
the gulf that separates corporal language from sound
rhythms on the stage, should concentrate on bringing
home to the public the real cause of the artistic inferi-
ority of which they cannot fail to be conscious, and
impressing on them that if dancing is no longer an art,
it is only because the fundamental laws of sound and
plastic aesthetics are no longer regarded.

The music of movement, like the music of sound, aims
at expressing the common emotions of himianity.

The music that is within us, and which is composed
of our nattu-al rhythms, and of the emotions that de-
termine the sensations peculiar to our temperament,
may assume different forms, according to the capacities

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How to Revive Dancing 237

of individuals. In dancing, it must transpose itself at
once into sound and movement. Sound-music regu-
lates, controls, and refines plastic, which otherwise
would be abandoned to the anarchy of movements.
In addition, it strengthens expression by means of its
stimulating properties. Plastic, on the other hand, ren-
ders sounds visible and gives them a human touch.

In the modem ballet, music and dancing are separated
owing to the isolation of musical and choreographic
training. This has been the case for so long that there
exists very little ballet music suitable for dancing, and
very few bodily rhythms involved in dancing that
can inspire composers with original musical ideas.
There is no common ground between dancers and com-
posers for the ballet, nor any rapport between rhsrthms
in time and those in space. '

Once it is admitted that bodily movements should
be controlled by musical rhythms, it becomes important
that the latter should be susceptible of corporal reali-
sation. If we examine the present-day ballet music, we

' If you point out this state of affairs to a painter, he will tell you,
with apparent logic, that, from his point of view, the sight of harmonious
movements is more important than the sound of adequately harmonised
music, and that this juxtaposition of different elements seems to him
to destroy the unity of the plastic impression. Undoubtedly — ft««iitT>ing
he lacks a normal feeling for music I — nothing can be more legitimate
than moving plastic dispensing with music, and drawing all its resources
from the human body. The trouble is that non-musical dancers, in-
capable of interpreting the music which is supposed to be inspiring them,
are not content to dispense with, and contrive rather to parody, it.
One thing or the other, either they regard music as a mere agent of
control over movements, in which case any instrument of percussion
will serve their purpose, or, accepting music as a genuinely inspiring
foroe, they must stdnnit themselves to its impulses, and spare us the
revolting spectacle of its prostitution.

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238 Rhythm, Music, and Education

find that the time-units are commonly too short to
enable legs and arms to express them synchronically,
whence we may conclude that composers of ballet are
unacquainted with the instrument for which they are
writing, and are producing music, the greater part of
which is impracticable for its proclaimed purposes.
They accumulate technical musical devices to dissimu-
late their lack of understanding of the human body,
and its potentialities of expression.

On the other hand, we find that when, in the course
of ballet music, passages suitable for expression by the
body do occur, the dancers do not even attempt to
reconcile their movements with the rhythm of the
music, and content themselves with adapting the con-
ventional interpretation. This leads us to our second
conclusion, that ballet dancers are ignorant of the laws
of sound rhythm, in relation to those of plastic rhythm,
and find themselves — confronted with music — in the
situation of a village fiddler able to repeat by heart a
certain ntunber of airs which have been crammed into
him, but who, placed in an orchestra, knowing nothing
of the laws of musical prosody, would seek to adapt
these airs — as best he could — ^to the music he was set to
read, and which was a dead letter to him. These two
conclusions bring us to a third, viz., that if we wish to
instigate a revival of dancing as an art, we must pro-
vide an education that will enable dancers to under-
stand the music they are set to express plastically, and
familiarise composers with the laws of balance and bod-
ily movement in all their nuances. Only in this way
can there be any question of an adequate rhythmic and
plastic expression of emotion, for only when we arc

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How to Revive Dancing 239

thoroughly versed in the multiple signs of a language
.can we effectively employ these signs to express our
feelings.

The art of musical rhythm consists in differentiating
time-durations, combining them in succession, arrang-
ing rests between them, and accentuating them con-
sciously or unconsciously, according to physiological
law. The art of plastic rhythm is to designate move-
ment in space, to interpret long time-values by slow
movements, and short ones by quick movements,
regulate pauses in their divers successions, and express
sound accentuations in their multiple nuances by ad-
ditions or diminutions of bodily weight, by means of
muscular innervations.

The dancer-student (and by the term dancer I imply
every interpreter of music by means of bodily move-
ment, including operatic singers and conductors) should
therefore undergo a double and parallel training, aS a
result of which he will acquire a knowledge of, and
sensitiveness to, music, and an understanding of the
rhjrthms that inspire it, together with the faculty of
interpreting these plastically, without sacrificing their
style — that is, the alterations the composer has effected
in the relations of the rhythms as between themselves.
It is these alterations that express his emotions and
all the dynamic and pathetic nuances comprising the
emotional element in the music should be executed by
the dancer by means of modifications in the regularity
of muscular movements effected by his own sensibility.
These modifications can only be produced as a result
of special exercises, and the following seem to me indis-

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^40 Rhythm, Music, and Education

pensable for giving the artist a consciousness of his
movements, and making it possible for him to vary and
combine them artificially without strain.

In the first place, the dancer must be rendered capa-
ble of walking in time, whatever the movement be —
which is by no means as easy as might be thought.
Dancers, as a nile, do not know how to walk slowly,
they cannot keep balance, and the virtuosity of their
legs is confined to quick movements. If one carefully
watches Isadora Ehmcan, in other respects the sworn
enemy of mere technical virtuosity, and a seeker after
naturalistic effects, one will notice that she rarely
walks in time to an adagio, almost invariably adding
involuntarily one or more steps to the niunber pre-
scribed by the musical phrase. This arises from her
inability to control the transfer of the weight of the
body from one leg to another in all variations of pace.
She disregards the laws of gravity which, from the cor-
poral plastic point of view, create the laws of balance.
The only art in space hitherto known to us, architec-
ture, is based on the laws of gravity and balance.
The human body is intended likewise to submit itself
to these laws, and various muscular innervations are
there for the purpose. Ordinary stage dancers are in-
capable of walking slowly; we have all seen them
waddle back to the wings, like ducks, after their turns.
Choreographic training deforms the natural play of
their joints. In my exercises in measured walking —
to me the A B C of a choreographic training — ^the stu-
dent learns to control the harmony of the active muscles,
and their complements, from the slowest largo to a
lively allegro, and to practise accelerandos, ritenutos, and

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How to Revive Dancing 241

rubdtos, in walking, without losing his balance. In
addition, different kinds of walking are evoked by the
different pace of musical phrases and adapted to stdc-
catos, legates, portandos, and the like effects of the music.
There exist here as many variations as in the bow
strokes of a violinist, and the same comparison will
enable us to follow the special exercises and training
necessitated by the different styles of walking and halt-
ing, whether abruptly or slowly. To attack a phrase
on the violin by an anacrusis of three semi-quavers
necessitates a different position for the bow, and a dif-
ferent kind of muscular activity from that required for
an attack on a semibreve played pianissimo^ or on a
crotchet played forte, and followed by a rest. The
study of repressions of steps is of even more importance,
inasmuch as the cessation of movement constitutes, for
dancing ptuposes, a potent means of creating contrasts
and of introducing poljrphony in the expression of
feelings. In many respects, the dance may be compared
with a concerto for violin and orchestra, in which the
soloist engages in a dialogue with the other instruments,
and where now one, now another of the two protagon-
ists remains silent for a moment to enable his inter-
locutor to speak. In dancing, however, the dialogue is
conducted in two different languages : plastic phrases re-
spond to musical phrases. The essential is that artistic
and aesthetic emotion should be expressed; for the rest,
plastic language has no less and varied resources than
that of music.

To return to our exercises in walking : it goes without

saying that these are not confined to a flat surface,
16

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242 Rhythm, Music, and Education

but are practised on inclines strewn with objects, and
on staircases of every kind and dimension. Once we
are concerned with utilising the whole body for the
expression of hiunan emotion, it becomes obviously ab-
surd to deprive it of opportunities of freely disporting
itself in its divers modes of activity. The walk of a
man will vary according to the surface on which he is
moving; it is therefore necessary that, in the theatre,
he should be given practice in moving on different
kinds of surfaces.' Have you ever seen children danc-
ing on a grassy slope? And do you know the deep
impression made by the sight of a crowd of men labori-
ously climbing a moimtain?

Preliminary exercises in walking should be executed
without the aid of the arms. These are reserved for
other than the purely balancing fimctions to which
ballet dancers devote them. The arms form the prin-
cipal mediiun for the expression of feelings called up by
dancing, and lend themselves to an infinite niunber of
combinations of movements. I should say that the
symbols forming the language of gesture are almost as
numerous as those of the language of articulate speech.
The study of gestures, their oppositions and combina-
tions, is, however, unknown in operatic ballet circles
where the arms serve only to maintain balance. Dan-
cers of the Duncan school employ more varied, beauti-
ful, and numerous gestures, but they are usually con-
fined to antique models, reproducing the attitudes of
Greek statues and by no means asserting the person-
ality of the dancer, or expressing spontaneous and sin-
cere emotion. Apart from that, they operate in space,

> See Chapter X, p. 202.

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How to Revive Dancing 243

without order of sequence; they are never led up to,
they occur at haphazard; they are not the inevitable
product of nuances of feeling dictated by the music;
finally, they fail to interpret the mentalities of con-
temporary human beings.

In studying diction, the pupil is taught carefully to
modulate his voice according to his temperament, and
not in imitation of the vocal nuances conceived by
others. The same applies to the study of gestture, which
should depend on the shape of Kmbs, the force and flexi-
bility of muscles, and the particular dispositions of the
joints. To give an idea of the infinite niunber of combina-
tions of gestures, let us take the movement of raising the
left ann and holding it, vertically, above the head. This
gesture may vary in form and expression, according to
the divers inclinations of the torso and head, the degree
of tension or flexion of the elbow or wrist, the position
of the fingers in the hand, open or closed, and the dis-
placements of the torso or other parts of the body.
Again, while raising the left arm, the right may remain
stationary or sink in contrast, or bend to the right or
left or rear, in every nuance of tension or flexion.
These various combinations of the arm may assume a
totally different significance, according as the actor's
eye is directed to the left arm, right arm, elbow, wrist,
or fingers. They produce varied impressions according
to the degree of resistance of the inhibitory muscles,
and the slowness or rapidity of the movements (one
arm may be raised slowly while the other makes a rapid
gesture). Yet again, while the left arm is being raised,
the right may execute quite a number of movements,
and each of these gestures may be seen in a different

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244 Rhythm, Music, and Education

aspect, according to the successive directions of the eye. ,
Finally, the divers positions of the legs will further
modify the pace and aesthetic significance of the arm
gestures. According as the weight of the body is on the
leg placed in front, or to the rear, and to the degree of
inclination, and the condition of flexion or tension of
the legs, the whole attitude will vary in meaning and
value. Each of these detailed modifications in the
position as a whole may, in their turn, be combined
with other alterations of the original attitude, from
which may be seen that the vocabulary of gesture does
not lack variety. The important point, for artistic
purposes, is that, according to the feeling that evokes
the gesture and the physiognomic expression produced
by the mental attitude, each of the varieties of gesture
we have mentioned will assume a distinctive character,
and reflect diversely the mtdtiple nuances of human
emotions.

Gesture itself is nothing — its whole value depends on
the emotion that inspires it, and no form of dance,
however rich in technical combinations of corporal atti-
tudes, can ever be more than a mere unmeaning amuse-
ment, so long as it does not aim at depicting htunan
emotions in their fulness and intimate veracity. One
has only to consider in this light our present operatic
ballets, and the psychological effect of their activities,
to realise that they outrage human dignity, arousing
only the paltriest emotions, of an effeminate tendency,
and eliminating the elements of vigour, initiative,
courage, aggression, and revolution in favour of a sen-
timental and artificial pretty-prettiness. The man

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How to Revive Dancing 245

plays a negligible r61e and is really superfluous. The
stimulating conflicts between resolution and weakness,
doggedness and resignation, masterful love and tender-
ness, struggles, perilous enterprises, the slow but sure
advance of Progress, the overcoming of obstacles, resist-
ances, and compimctions, the victories over self — all
these must give way to the conventional travesty (or
what is one to call an art in which Siegfried, Renaud,
and Tristan are represented by women?) in which the
man, conscious of the decadence of choreographic art,
dare not assert his virility, nor aflSrm his dignity of
authority, nor manifest plastically his innate aesthetic
qualities, the instinct for domination and for tenacious
resistance. What more repulsive spectacle can there
be than that of the male dancer asstiming feminine
graces? The eternal conflict of the sexes must be the
keynote of the revival of the dance, and the latter can
only recover its social influence and character of hirnian
truth, when the eternal adversaries, whose oppositions
and reconciliations form the basis of all vital dramatic
art, are adequately represented and staged.

Who can doubt but that, once balance has been
restored, the divers nuances of expression will only
appear in individuals capable of feeling emotion, when
brought into contact with art, tmder the influence of
sincerely felt sensations and sentiments? Part of the
dancer's education will have to be devoted to his nerv-
ous system; special exercises habituating the nerves
to transmit the orders of the brain to the limbs en-
trusted with their execution, and establishing by means
of rhythm a vital and regular circulation — covering all
nuances of movement — between the divers agents of

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^46 Rhythm, Music, and Education

the organism. Numerous automatic movements must
be created, and made subservient to the conscious will,
imder whose direction they may be applied or with-
held, combined, opposed, or superposed. The sub-
conscious manifestations of individuahty will also have
to be developed, while not overburdening the nervous
system, nor destroying the plastic harmony of the organ-
ism. Before all else, the plastic interpreter of musi-
cal emotions must, however, be made capable, by virtue
of an artistic and moral training, of deeply sensing
these emotions — ^for any attempt at expression on the
part of one not genuindy inspired by music is a sham.
. . . Consider the admirable Russian dancers, with
their fiery temperament, their grace, flexibility, and
imdeniable rhythmic qualities — ^watch them on occasion
discard their dizzy gyratory effects, to bring out the
lyric essence of a dramatic situation ! Their movement
at once loses all ease and sincerity. Sentiment is re-
placed by sentimentality, natural expression by grand-
iloquence, each gesture of passion, shame, desire,
suffering, is exaggerated to an extreme. A constant
vibrato animates their movements; a continuous crude
expansion asserts itself; the immodesty of simulated
emotion is exposed in all its nakedness! Does this mean
that the dancers lack science, tact, and intelligence?
Not in the least. The cause of this exaggeration of
attitudes and gestures is the lack of a close co-ordination
between their sensibilities and those of the musician.
The music does not directly re-act on their sensitive
faculties, does not irresistibly inspire the natural means
of bodily eicpression; they are unable to express music,
through incapacity to take it in.

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How to Revive Dancing 247

Tfie interpreter is no true artist unless he is capable
not only of giving^ but — once having received, humbly
and joyfully, the "message" of the work — of creating
anew what he has received, and of conveying to others,
transfused, the essence of that message and of himself.

To the majority of ballet dancers, music is only a
pretext for decorative effects in moving plastic. Beauty
of gesture is sought in no other interest than that of
the aesthetic application of their physical resources.
They do not realise that no attitude can produce an
impression of sincerity and beauty, unless it is the
product of a state of mind — or indeed, of soul. The
research for external grace excludes every effect of
simple and natural beauty. This latter is the product
of inner physical and intellectual effort, tending to the
ptu^uit after higher, imiversal elements. Before ex-
pressing music, the dancer should be capable of living,
and of responding to its impulses, in a completely dis-
interested spirit. The body is never so beautiful as
when reflecting beauty of thought and the spontaneous
stimulus of life. As Wagner said: "Only life can
create a real need for art, and can furnish art with
both matter and form."

The dancer-artist should make use of his whole
body in expressing his emotions through music, and,
inversely, in expressing music through his emotions; it
is therrfore indispensable not only that all his limbs
should be trained, but that his sensibility and musical
intelligence should be adequately developed^.] A special
education, aiming at awakening a feeling for the rela-
tions between movements in music and those of the
muscular and nervous system, shotdd be imposed not

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248 Rhythm, Music, and Education

only on dancers, but on all artists pre-eminently con-
cerned with rhythm, e. g., instrumentalists, singers,
producers, and conductors. [This education will result
in the formation of live and sensitive beings, in control
of their temperament, and capable of externalising and
refining swift and acute sensations, and of tmderstand-
ing and loving the music whose many emotions they
are set to interpret. The executive artist will constitute
no longer a mere instrument, but a human being, capable
of conveying his feelings — or the feelings of others — ^in
a beautiful form, to a public he is able both to interest
and stimulate. The present training of dancers is long
and arduous. And what does it produce? The execu-
tion by the legs of a number of small, quick — ^aod ugly —
movements without expression or delicacy; the power
of effecting prodigious leaps, like frogs, and revolutions
like spinning-tops ! In arm gestures, as we have already
explained, the dancer is entirely deficient; adequate
facial and ocular play can never be achieved so long as
the subject is uncultured in feeling and thought. And
even the acrobatic dancing, that constitutes the triumph
of our premieres ballerines, is confined to flat surfaces.
As we have pointed out, specialisation in exercises of
virtuosity has not even initiated dancers into evolutions
on divers forms of surfaces and on staircases, to say
nothing of walking slowly and with grace.

If only we had the enterprise — artists and public alike
— to repudiate the anti-aesthetic spectacles so consist-
ently presented to us on the operatic stage ! If only our
composers and conductors had the courage and keenness
to insist on ballet masters learning music and teaching
it to their dancers ! The facts speak for themselves : the

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How to Revive Dancing 249

majority of dancers concerned with interpreting music
do not know their notes, or, if they do, have no real
understanding of music, of the intimate relations of
which with plastic art they are completely ignorant.

Plastic polyrhythm is unknown in our ballet dancing.
The art of contrasting movements and attitudes is still
in an embryonic stage. The simultaneous execution of
slow movements with the same movements at double,
triple, or quadruple speed has never been attempted.
The nuances produced by the co-operation of a large
number of individualities in the expression of a
single composite emotion cannot be achieved so
long as those individualities remain incompletely de-
veloped, or even, as is often the case, without power
of expression.

The very bodies of the most gifted and fully trained
dancers are hampered in their strivings towards com-
plete power of expression, by the artificial light, devoid
alike of subtlety and truth, in which they are obliged
to execute their movements. It is virtually impossible
for them to express themselves plastically without the
support of lighting effects, which at once reveal, and
inspire them, creating an atmosphere in space analo-
gous to that created by the play of music in time. The
present system allows for no play of natural shadows,
no contrast of delicate movements with firmly sil-
houetted attitudes, no attempt at representing a cres-
cendo by a gradation from darkness to light, directly
inspired by the music — no connection between the
space wherein the dancers disport themselves and the
rhythms they, execute, between the respective emotions
created by the environment and the action,

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250 Rhythm, Music, and Education

In an exhibition of dancing to which several arts
collaborate in harmony (moving plastic, music, decora-
tive staging) it is highly desirable to avoid any conflict
between the artificial and the real. Reality will always
hold the spectator's attention more forcibly than arti-
fice, making the latter tmsatisfactory and ridiculous.
For this reason the three dimensions of space should
never, in a setting for dancing, admit of an imaginary
perspective of the painter's creation — nor will the real
and vivid light which reveals the reality and vividness
of those three dimensions in moving plastic suffer im-
aginative lighting effects in the staging. Similarly,
the rhythm of moving plastic should be spared the
competition of imaginary but fixed movements of
statuary and painting. Existing stage decoration is
the mortal enemy of real rhythm executed by the
human body in the three real dimensions of space.
Decoration in two real dimensions and a fictitious depth
is out of place in a space involving real depth; while
a lighting which suppresses shadows compromises the
real value of plastic and movement. The setting for a
display of dancing should be of a genuinely plastic
nature, and the lighting, the aim of which should be to
reveal the bodily rhythms in the most natural way,
should fall from heaven, or break from the horizon.

Since all sources of expressive movements in moving
plastic are of an imaginative nature, a direct contact
with reality should not be permitted to compromise the
illusion and destroy the imaginative effects conveyed
through that mediiun of expression. The illusion
should be produced by the expressive action confined
to tim^ and space, music^ atmosphere and light. The

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How to Revive Dancing 251

flowers a dancer stoops to pick must be fictitious and
exist only in his imagination, or in the music which
dictates the gesture of picking flowers; neither real nor
artificial flowers shotdd be laid on the groimd. The
smell of these fictitious flowers has no real existence.
You may convey it by the same gestures as those ex-
pressive of the joy of breathing the fragrance of life;
you do not require to have the stage sprinkled with
perfume!' The sotirces of joy, sorrow, despair, and
energy have no real existence in the scenic representa-
tion of these passions, or at least exist only in the actor;
but all the impressions which have motdded his thoughts
and feelings are expressed by his attitude and move-
ments, by the proportion of their duration, and their
accentuation, by the combination of the degrees of
lightness and weight of his various limbs, and by the
collaboration of his muscles, the servants of his tem-
perament. In that sense the means of expression are
realistic, and anything forming part of the setting,
outside space and light, becomes a lie. As opposed to
pantomime, which cannot dispense with real objects,
because the relations between man and his environment
are therein specialised to an extreme, natural dancing
generalises feelings and emotions, expressing them in
their elementary form. That is why the causes of
these feelings lose their intensity in being made mani-
fest; their meanness renders unconvincing and dispro-
portionate the lyric grandeur of their expression. For
example, fear in face of the dangers of nature is experi-
enced by all human beings; but such dangers, as repre-
sented by material metos in the restricted space of a
> As in certain exhibitions of Dada and Negro dancing, and the like.

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252 Rhythm, Music, and Education

stage, can only admit of the presence of individuals,
not of mankind. The art of living plastic (the Greek
orchesis) is the product of impression transformed into
expression, and does not confine itself either to the
concrete or the abstract. In it the body must serve
always to express the life of the soul. Consequently,
thoughts and feelings which cannot be entirely exter-
nalised by its natural motor forces are outside its
province, pertaining to that of the conventional thea-
tre, which is concerned with the individualisation and
specialisation of the circtmistances and forms of matter
surrounding the individual.

Dancing must be completely reformed; in this, as in
so many other domains, mere ameliorative measures
seem to me to be utterly futile. The art is in a state
of decay, and must be rooted out, and replaced by a
new one, founded on principles of beauty, purity, sin-
cerity, and harmony. Both dancer and public should
be trained in feeling for bodily forms; the courageous
and noble efforts of Isadora Dtmcan and her disciples
to restore plastic purity, by the idealisation of the
quasi-nudity of the hiunan body, must not be allowed
to succumb to the clamour of protests from hypocritical
or ignorant Philistines. Bodies trained in the refined
realisation of rhythmic sensations must learn to assimi-
late thought and absorb music — ^the psychological and
idealising factor in dancing. Doubtless it will be pos-
sible one day, when music has become ingrained in
the body, and is at one with it, when the human organ-
ism is impregnated with the many rhythms of the
emotions of the soul, and only requires to react natur-
ally to express them plastically by a process of trans-

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How to Revive Dancing ^53

position, in which only appearances are changed —
doubtless it will be possible at that stage to dance,
without the accompaniment of sounds. The body will
suflfice to express the joys and sorrows of men, and will
not require the co-operation of instnunents to dictate
their rhythms — itself comprising all rhjrthms and ex-
pressing them naturally in movements and attitudes.
Meanwhile, the body must submit to the intimate col-
laboration of music, or rather, be willing to yield, with-
out restriction, to the discipline of sounds in all their
metrical and pathetic accentuations, adapting their
rhythms to its own, or, better still, contriving to oppose
plastic to sound rhythms, in a rich counterpoint never
before undertaken, and which must definitely establish
the unity of gesture and symphony. And thus the
dance of to-morrow will become a medium of expres-
sion and poesy, a manifestation of art, emotion, and
truth. ...

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CHAPTER XII
EURHYTHMICS AND MOVING PLASTIC (1919)

The art of the Eurhythmist is self-sufficient — A nalysis of the
art of moving plastic — Muscular consciousness and instinct
for attitudes — Table of elements common to music and moving
plastic — Rhythms musical and intellectual — A rhythm — Pos-
sible amelioration of mwfuxorporal interpretations — Se-
quence of attitudes — ^L'Aprte-midi d'un Paune, Russian ballet,
and continuous movement — Visual and muscular experiences.

ClassificaHon of elements common to moving plastic and
music — Dynamics — Agogics {division of time) — Division of
space — Relations between time and space — Division of time
and space in relation to the situation of the individual in
space — Sequence of gestures — Gestures from the cesthetic point
of view — Plastic and musical value of gesture — Gestures qf
groups — Rhythm and human society.

^55

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CHAPTER XII

EURHYTHMICS AND MOVING PLASTIC (19I9)

Rhythmics aims at the bodily representation of musi-
cal values, by means of a specid training tending to
muster in ourselves the elements necessary for this
representation — which is no more than the spontaneous
extemalisation of mental attitudes dictated by the same
emotions that animate music. If the expression of
the emotions does not directly react on our sensorial
faculties, and produce a correspondence between sound
rhythms and our physical rhythms, and between their
exptdsive force and our sensibility, our plastic exter-
nalisation will become mere imitation. It is this that
distinguishes eurhythmies from the old systems of callis-
thenics, musical drill, and dancing. All external effects
of corporal expression, bom of an understanding of
rhythmic movement and music, are the inevitable
product of a state of emotion quite free from aesthetic
ambition. Their manifestation satisfies the exigencies
of art, since art consists of magnifying ideas and emo-
tions, and giving them a decorative form and style,
while developing their vital qualities and rendering
them susceptible of conmiunication to others. The
eurhythmist is he who both creates (or re-creates) artis-
tic emotion, and experiences it. In him, sensation
humanises the idea, and the idea spirittialises sensation.
'7 257

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^58 Rhythm, Music, and Education

In the laboratory of his organism a transmutation is
effected, tiiming the creator into both actor and spec-
tator of his own composition.

K, once having achieved the corporal representation
of musical rhythms (by means of the transformation of
metaphysical sensation into manifestations of a muscu-
lar order and vice versa), the eurhythmist tries to modify
these effects so as to externalise their form and impress
them visually on the spectator, the eurh3rthmic training
changes its character and asstunes an aesthetic and social
significance. And the pursuit of perfection in the inter-
pretation, via the body, of musical emotions and feel-
ings, enters the region of what, as distinct from the
arts of painting and sculpture, we may call moving or
living pUistic. Eurhythmic exercises enable the indi-
vidual to feel and express music corporally, for his own
pleasure, thus constituting in themselves a complete
art, in touch with life and movement. A training in
moving plastic renders the eurhythmic mediums of ex-
pression more harmonious and decorative, and refines
gestures and attitudes by a process of successive
eliminations.*

The conventional ballet training concentrates on har-
mony and graceof corporal movements, without insisting
upon the partictdar mental state, inevitably conducive

' We have often remarked that Eurh3rthmics cannot be judged from
the mere sight of movements executed by its students. Eurhythmies
constitutes an eminently individual experience. Moving plastic is a
complete art directly addressed to the eyes of spectators, althou^
directly experienced by its exponents. The impressions of a Eurhythm-
ist may be conveyed to spectators particularly sensitive to the "feeling
of movement"; the plastic artist aims at conveying his wapreBskms to
the public

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Eurhythmies and Moving Plastic 259

to these movements, on the part of the dancer. Edu-
cation by and in rhythm aims, before all else, at produc-
ing in the student a psycho-physical sensibility, calcu-
lated at once to create the need and ftimish the means
of spontaneously externalising musical rhythms genu-
inely felt, and interpreting them by any means inspired
by a perfect knowledge of the relations of space, time,
and weight. The conventional dancer adapts music to
his particular technique and a ntunber — in reality very
restricted — of automatisms; the eurhythmist lives this
music, makes it his own — ^his movements quite natur-
ally interpreting it. A training in moving plastic will
also teach him to select, among these movements, those
most expressive and stiitable for producing effects of a
decorative order which will convey to the spectator
the feelings and sensations which have inspired them.
The main thing is that the emotions, which have in-
spired the sound rhythms and the form in which they
have taken shape (also the processes of a geometrical
and architectural order which have determined the
harmonies and developments), shotdd be reproduced
in their plastic representation, and that the same life
force shotdd animate sound music and the music of
gesture alike.

Once the limbs are trained, once the senses and mind
have been awakened by rhythm, the nervous resistances
eliminated, and the divers forces of the organism con-
nected by a continuous and powerf td current, it becomes
necessary to complete the muscular sense, the feeling
for space and familiarity with its laws — as well as that
for shades of time — ^by the acquisition of aesthetic
qualities and of the instinct for divining the restdts

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26o Rhythm, Music, and Education

certain movements will produce on others, and which
enable the plastic artist to * 'realise" with his limbs
gestures and attitudes he has previously imagined.
Placed before a mirror, he should see reflected the per-
fect plastic expression of a preconceived ensemble of
lines and curves; for, just as merely being musical will
not enable a man to create music, so the mere possession
of a feeling for plastic beauty and emotion will not
suffice to transpose emotion and beauty into external
forms of physical movement. While acuteness of visual
powers and a ctdtivated decorative sense enable a
draughtsman to convey graphically the beauty of the
human body in movement, these qualities will by no
means serve to enable him to represent those move-
ments through the mediiun of his own body. For that
purpose he will have to acquire, by means of a special
training, the inward sense of decorative line and form,
balance and dynamism, necessary for plastic repre-
sentation.

Every visual or auditive activity begins with a simple
registration of images and sounds, and the receptive
faculties of eye and ear will only develop an aesthetic
activity when the muscular sense is sufficiently devel-
oped to convert the sensations so registered into move-
ment. As we have said elsewhere, and frequently,
movement is the basis of all the arts, and no artistic
culture is possible without a previous study of the forms
of movement and a thorough training of our motor-tac-
tile faculties. It was this discovery that led us to pre-
cede lessons in solf ^e by a training of the nervous and
muscular systems, according to the laws of time and
rhythm; the same phenomenon shows us the danger of

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Eurhythmies and Moving Plastic 261

undertaking the study of moving plastic (corporal sol-
f^ge) without reiterated experiences tending to the
acquisition of a host of qualities producing collectively
a feeling for space in time, and time in space, by means
of movement.

A point is reached when moving plastic becomes
completely musicalised by the study of the mtdtiple
elements of an agogic and dynamic nature which consti-
tute the expressive language of sound. It will then
seek to create forms of movement at once decorative
and expressive, without resort to sound, by the exclusive
aid of its own music. Doubtless these mediums of
musical expression can never become really complete
without the co-operation of whole groups of people,
for it is a matter not only of endowing the htunan body
with all the divers mediiuns of expression, possessed by
the art of music, and of making that body the direct
agent of thought and creative emotion — ^but also of har-
monising and orchestrating several bodies in movement.

The elements common to music and the modem
ballet are exclusively time and, more or less as an ac-
cessory, rhythm. The elements common to music and
moving plastic are :

Music

Moving Plastic

Pitch

Position and direction of ges-

tures in space

Intensity of sound

Muscular dynamics

Timbre

Diversity in corporal forms

(the sexes)

Duration

Time

Rhythm

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262 Rhj^hm, Music, and Education

Music

Matnng Plastic

Rests

Pauses

Melody

Continuous succession of iso-

lated movements

Counterpoint

Opposition of movements

Chords

Arresting of associated ges-

tures (or gestures in groups)

Harmonic successions

Succession of associated

movements (or of gestures

in groups)

Phrasing

Construction (form)

Distribution of movements in

space and time

Orchestration (vide timbre)

Opposition and combination

of divers corporal forms

(the sexes)

All the rhjrthmic elements in music were originally
formed after the rhythms of the human body; but in
course of time the types and their combinations were
varied and mtdtiplied to the point of spiritualising
music, and their muscular origin was eventually lost
sight of. The body became unaccustomed to them in
proportion as the preponderance of purely intellectxial
education increased; and so it has come about that
the majority of rhythmic models taken from modem
music, even ballet music, are no longer capiable of
interpretation by the body. Certain types of music
may be associated with bodily movements, but not vi-
tally interpreted by them, nor what one may call plasti-
cally transposed. In our ballets, sound movements
are developed concurrently with corporal movements;
the music acts as an accompaniment, and not as a col-

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Eurhythmies and Moving Plastic 263

laborator; it neither inspires, penetrates, nor animates
the gestures, movements, and attitudes. That is why
so-called "classical" dancing does not constitute a com-
plete art, nor contribute to the progress of the art. In
fact, the ballet dancer possesses intuitively neither in-
tellectual nor physical rhythms, his virtuosity being
formed from a combination of automatisms that his
emotion cannot replace, at will, by spontaneous rhythm-
ic manifestations. The composer of ballet music, for
his part, has only intellectual rhythms at his disposal,
and these are likewise automatised to such a pitch
that he cannot interrupt a development of a purely"^
musical character in his score in favour of spontaneous
rhythms, of a corporal origin. Dancer and musician
alike are slaves of time, as unversed in nuances of time-
duration, as in the dynamic relations of sound and cor-
poral movements. The composer may observe the
conventional musical rhythms, but is a-rhythmic from
a muscular point of view. The dancer, for the most
part, is a-rhythmic both from the muscular and musical
points of view, for lack of an education that wotdd
enable him both to break his automatisms (or adapt
them tb modifications of time-dtiration), and to incor-
porate and later externalise sound rhythms with com-
plete ease and flexibility. Let me explain what I mean :
To be a-rhythmic is to be incapable of following a
movement in the exact time required for its normal
execution; to hurry it here or delay it there instead of
keeping it at a imiform pace, not to know how to accel-
erate it when acceleration is necessary, or to draw it
out when protraction is necessary; to make it rough
and jerky instead of smooth and continuous, and viu

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264 Rhythm, Music, and Education

versa; to commence or finish too late or too soon; not
to be able to link a movement of one sort on to a move-
ment of another sort — ^a slow to a quick, a flexible to a
rigid, a vigorous to a gentle, movement ; to be incapable
of executing simultaneously two or more conflicting
movements nor to know how to shade a movement,
that is, to execute it in an imperceptible gradation
from piano to forte, and vice versa, or to accentu-
ate it metrically or pathetically at the points fixed
by the requisites of the musical shape or emotion.
All these deficiencies, without exception, may be at-
tributed either to inability of the brain to issue its
orders sufficiently promptly to the muscles responsible
for the execution of the movement, inability of the
nervous system to transmit these orders accurately and
smoothly to the right quarters, or inability of the
muscles to execute them infallibly. A-rhythm arises,
then, from a lack of harmony and co-ordination be-
tween the conception and the execution of the move-
ment, and from the nervous irr^ularity that, in some
cases, produces, and, in others, is the product of, this
dis-harmony. With some people, the brain Qiay con-
ceive the rhythms normally enough, having inherited
a supply of clear and distinct rhythmic images, but
the Umbs, while perfectly capable of executing these
rhythms, are hampered by a disordered nervous system.
Others suffer from the inability of their limbs to exe-
cute the perfectly distinct orders of the brain, and this
ineffectual nervous functioning eventually produces a
breakdown of the system. With others again, who
possess perfectly sotmd nerves and muscles, the clear
r^stration, in thq brain, of durable images is impeded

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Eurhythmies and Moving Plastic 265

by inadequate education in rhythm. The object oj
rhythmic training is to regulate the natural rhythms oj
the body and, by their automatisation, to create definite
rhythmic images in the brain.

Some considerable time must elapse before the
desired renaissance of rhythm in music can be accom-
plished, " but I claim that a relatively short time shotdd
suffice for a rhythmic training to reform musical, dra-
matic, and choreographic interpretations. In the first
place, theatrical performers — actors, singers, and danc-
ers— who undergo a course of such rhythmic training
shotdd at once realise that, without it, a satisfactory
and rhythmic musical expression is out of the question.
Nine tenths of the auditors of an opera are unaware of
the constant conflict between the orchestra and the
action. Singers and dancers alike impose their ges-
tures and attitudes, utterly regardless of time, on music
which either they do not imderstand, or else they
understand imperfectly. Their feet are set in motion
when they should remain stationary, their arms are
raised when they shotdd be motionless, their bodies no
more harmonise with the music than would their
throats if they sang out of tune or time, or suddenly
began an air from another opera, while the orchestra
continued to play from the original score! And these
deficiencies are the product alike of the clumsiness of
limbs ill-trained in rhythm and of mind insuflficiently
cultivated, and consequently ignorant of the intimate
relationships between movements in space and move-

» See Chap. VII, p. 145: " Eurhythmies and Musical Composition."

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266 Rhythm, Music, and Education

ments in time. I challenge any singer, be he the great-
est genius in the world, to interpret plastically and with
rhythmic feeling the simplest music, before he has
imdergone a special education designed to make his
muscular actions correspond with sotmd movements.'
This training shotdd be accorded all operatic singers of
the future, and shotdd be taken in conjimction with
their vocal training. The results wotdd be such, I am
persuaded, as to make it appear incredible that at any
time the study of corporal rhythms shotdd not have
formed part of their dramatic training.

This rhjrthmic training should likewise have a place
in the education of conductors, producers, and operatic
composers, who should be initiated into the many re-
sources of that most expressive instrument, the human
body, before attempting to set it music to interpret.
The relations between sound rh3rthms and plastic
rhjrthms must also be taught all dancers, whose art,
as foreshadowed by Gr6try, Schiller, Goethe, Schopen-
hauer, and Wagner, will thereby be ennobled, made at
the same time human and more poetic, and will cease
to be what it is to-day — sl mere amusement for the legs,
devoid alike of intellectual value, aesthetic or musical
feeling, and social or artistic interest.

But ignorance of musical rh3rthm is not the only
cause of the inferiority of artistic manifestations in
which the body plays a part. Another mistake which
tends to discount the sovereign importance of the body
in our stage performances consists in taking as models

* The dissociation of movements of the larynx from those of the limbs
is even more difficult to achieve than that of arms, legs, and head.

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Eurhythmies and Moving Plastic 267

for bodily movements attitudes stereotyped by painters
and sculptors.

Often when present at displays of dancing, frantic-
ally applauded by eminently artistic spectators, I have
wondered why my musical taste was offended, and why,
despite the undoubted talent of the performer, a feeling
of discomfort was awakened in me, as well as an im-
pression of something artificial, something prepared
and unnatural. I have heard painters, endowed with
admirable judgment, express their enthusiasm at the
splendour of the attitudes, the refinement of the ges-
tures, the harmony of the groupings, and the audacity
of the acrobatic movements; and while admitting these
qualities, while bowing before so much artistic feeling,
sincerity, ability, and knowledge, I could not bring
myself to feel the slightest aesthetic emotion, and could
only accuse myself of coldness, lack of understanding,
and Philistinism.

A production of Debussy's V Aprhs^midid'un Faune
a few years ago revealed to me the cause of my mis-
givings and distaste. A procession of nymphs moved
slowly on to the stage, pausing every eight or twelve
steps to enable their charming attitudes (copied from
Greek vases) to be adequately admired. On continuing
their march in the last attitude assiuned, they would
attack the following attitude — ^at the moment of the
fresh pause in walking — ^without any preparatory move-
ment, thus giving the jerky impression that would be
conveyed at the cinema by a series of movements from
which the essential portions of the film had been sup-
pressed. I then understood that what shocked me
was the lack of connection which should be present in

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268 Rhythm, Music, and Education

every manifestation of life heightened by thought.
The exquisite attitudes of the Greek nymphs followed
each other without any attempt at linking them by a
hiunan and natural process. They formed a series of
pictures, most artistic in eflFect, but voluntarily deprived
of all the advantages obtained by time-duration — ^I
mean continuity , the potentiaUties of slow development,
the easy preparation and, as it were, inevitable climax
of plastic movement in space — ^all of them essentially
musical elements, and which alone assure truth and
naturalness to the union of gesture and music.

Gtiided by this experience, I analysed in the same
way the movements of various dancers of the highest
distinction, and noted that those among them who
were most truly musicians, while endeavouring to fol-
low the pattern of the music in the most scrupulous
manner, had no more regard for the principle of con-
tinuity of movement and of plastic phrasing than the
nymphs mentioned above. I mean that in the play of
their limbs the point of departure was the attitude and
not the movement itself.

Musicians will follow me: in compositions of a con-
trapuntal nature, the lines of the polyphony are not
embroidered on a canvas formed of chords, chosen,
fixed, and linked together in advance. On the contrary,
the chords depend on the outlines and patterns of the
melody. The ear does not sense and analyse them as
such, until the parts cease moving and become sus-
tained notes. In moving plastic the same thing shotdd
happen. Attitudes are pauses in the movement. Every
time that, in the uninterrupted sequence of movements
forming what might be called the "plastic melody,*' a

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Eurhythmies and Moving Plastic 269

punctuation mark is inserted, a pause corresponding
to a comma, semicolon, or full stop in speech, the
movement becomes static and is perceived as an
attitude.

But the real perception of movement is not visxial:
it is muscular, and the living symphony of steps, ges-
tures, and consecutive attitudes is formed and con-
trolled not by the agent of mere appreciation — ^the
eye, but by that of creation: the whole muscular
apparatus. Under the action of spontaneous feelings
and irresistible emotions the body vibrates, starts into
movement, and eventually asstunes an attitude. The
latter is the direct product of the movements which
prepare it, whereas in choreographic art of the present
day, movement is only a bridge connecting two differ-
ent attitudes. Thus there exists, in the art of dancing,
as at present understood in our theatres, a confusion
between visual and muscular experience. Dancers'
choose models for their attitudes among masterpieces
of sculpture or of painting, and take inspiration from
Greek frescoes, statues, and paintings, ignoring the
fact that these works are themselves the product of a
special cultivation of style — of a sort of compromise be-
tween the relations of movements, a series of diminu-
tions and sacrifices which have enabled their creators
to convey the illusion of movement by synthetic means.
But if it be necessary for the plastic arts, deprived of
the help of the time element, to produce a synthesis by
means of fixed corporal attitudes, it is against truth

> In several of her plastic interpretations, Isadora Duncan instinc-
tively surrenders her body to continuous movement, and these are
always the most vital and stimulating of her dances.

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270 Rhythm, Music, and Education

and nature for the dancer to adapt this synthesis as
the starting-point of his dance, and to try and re-create
the illusion of movement by juxtaposing series of atti-
tudes, linked, each to its neighbour, by gestures, instead
of resorting to the source of plastic expression — ^which
is movement itself.

Specialists in the visual arts may be justified in
appreciating the present mode of dancing which, with
the magic of colours, the startling contrasts of lighting,
and with the help — ^as it were non-material — of the
flowing lines of light or heavy drapery and costume
satisfies the most refined decorative exigencies, and
furnishes the eye with an exquisitely picturesque enjoy-
ment. But is this enjoyment of a spiritual and emotive
order? Is it the real and direct product of deep and
sincere feelings? And completely as it satisfies our
yearning for aesthetic pleasure, does it saturate us with
the creative emotion of the work?

Bodily movements are a muscular experience, and
are appreciated by a sixth — ^the "muscular" — sense,
which controls the multiple nuances of force and speed
of those movements in a manner appropriate to the
emotions that inspire them, and which will enable the
human mechanism to refine those emotions, thus ren-
dering dancing a complete and essentially human art.

Eurhythmies undoubtedly is based on muscular ex-
perience, and eurhythmidans watching exercises per-
formed by f eUow-students do not follow them merely
with the eye, but actually with their whole being.
They enter into close commtuiion with the spectacle
they are watching, experiencing thereby a joy of a
peculiar nature, and a yearning to move, to vibrate in

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Eurhythmies and Moving Plastic 271

unison with those they see expressing themselves in
physical movement. In short, they feel awakening and
palpitating in them a mysterious music, which is the
direct product of their feelings and sensations. This
music of the individuality would suffice to control
human movements if mankind had not lost that sense
of order and of the shading of physical expression,
without which a revival of the dance can never be
achieved. There is no tradition of corporal movements,
and, as we have seen, modem dancers borrow from the
fine arts a cult of attitude which substitutes intellec-
tual experiences for spontaneous feelings, and relegates
dancing to €^ secondary plane in the realm of art. There
is only one way of restoring tg the body the complete
scale of its means of expression, and that is to submit
it to an intensive musical culture, to give it complete
control of all its powers of dynamic and agogic expres-
sion, and the power to feel all shades of tone-music and
express them muscularly. A special education will lib-
erate the music imprisoned in the sotd of the artist —
the individual music that, entering into and fusing
with the music to be interpreted, gives it an increasing
life, so much so that the individual rhythms of all the
interpreters of a choreographic work achieve a collec-
tive emotion that is the very genesis of style. As
Elis6e Redus puts it: "The people, of which we form
part, moves in consistent rhythm; in each of us an
inner music, the cadences of which resound in our
breasts, controls the vibrations of our flesh, the move-
ments of our steps, the impulses of passion, even the
course of our thoughts; and all these activities have
only to unite in one harmony for a multiple organism

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27^ Rhythm, Music, and Education

to be constituted, comprising a whole crowd, and giving
it a single sotil."

This is not the place to analyse in detail all the ele-
ments indicated above as being common to music and
plastic; nor to set out all the exercises designed to
awaken in the mind the sense of a fusion of these two
arts, superficially so different. I would commend to
the reader, desirous of familiarising himself with these
exercises, my book on Moving Plastic, ' and wiU here
confine myself to establishing certain f imdamental rela-
tions between the two essential musico-plastic elements,
(i) Dynamics (so-called) — that is, the science of grada-
tions of force; (2) Agogics (time-division) — that is, the
science of gradations of speed. This latter involves a
further element, (3) the division 0} space, these two con-
ceptions being inseparable in defining movement.

It goes without saying that the dynamic is closely
related to the agogic element, and that the gradations
of force are often inseparable from those of speed or
slowness. But, for the sake of accuracy, we will con-
sider each of these two concepts separately in the
following tentative essay in classification. This classifi-
cation does not claim to be definitive, nor to comprise
the whole of the questions relating to plastic. It is
intended simply as a lucid, if abstract, exposition of
the ftmdamental elements of moving plastic and their
relations to music. These two arts, plastic and music,
being essentially of a dynamic nature, it is natural
that a study of the gradations of movement should be

' Exercises de plastique animSe, Lausanne: Jobin & Cie, London;
Novello & Co., 160 Wardour St W.

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Eurhythmies and Moving Plastic 273

based on music. We will therefore designate as "mu-
sical movement," every movement conforming to the
dynamic laws that govern music.

Dynamics

The function of dynamics in music is to vary the
gradations of force and weight of sounds, whether
abruptly, by the effect of sudden contrasts, or progres-
sively, by crescendo and decrescendo.

The instrumentalist, entrusted with the interpreta-
tion of these musical-dynamic gradations, must possess
the mechanism necessary for producing sound in all
its degrees of force — for increasing and diminishing it
according to the composer's intentions. Where the
instrument chosen for the interpretation of music is
the whole human body, this body must have acquired
a perfect knowledge of its muscular potentialities, and
be capable of consciously exercising them. This will
necessitate a profotmd study of technique in relation to
musical dynamics: a training in the differentiation of
joints, of which each must be exercised separately; a
training in muscular contraction and decontraction of
the whole body, or of one of its limbs, or indeed of two
or more limbs, operating with conflicting muscular gra-
dations; finally, a training in balance, flexibility, and
elasticity.

In the majority of gymnastic systems of a hygienic
or athletic character, dynamics dispenses with the help
of agogics — ^that is to say, the movements are practised
gud movements, the instructors paying insufficient re-
gard to the modifications introduced by differences of
18

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274 Rhythm, Music, and Education

time-duration in the preparation for muscular activities.
As will be seen from tihe succeeding section treating
of the division of space by relation to division of time,
it is only by the practice of special exercises that one
is enabled to precede any corporal movement by a
precise preparation ensuring its perfect execution.

The precise preparation and linking together of move-
ments depend on the harmony of the nervous system.
A good gymnast is not necessarily a eurhythmidan and
plastic artist. The training in corporal dynamics
should therefore be completed by a study of the laws of
agogics (division of time) and of the division of space.

Division of Time C* Agogics") and Division of

Space

The function of agogics in music is to introduce va-
riations in the duration of time, and to shade sotmds
in all degrees of speed, whether metrically (by a mathe-
matic division of each sotmd into fractions of a half,
third, quarter, eighth, etc., of its time-value) or patheti-
cally (by pauses — rubato, accelerando^ rallentando, etc.).

Of all organic agents of agogic expression, the fingers
are the best qualified to interpret quick passages — ^far
better than the wrist that guides the violinist's bow, or
the feet that operate the pedals of the organ. The
aptest instrument for the execution of very slow sounds
is the breathing apparatus productive of the music of
the voice and wind instruments. The whole htmian
body constitutes the ideal musical instrument that is
most capable of interpreting soimds in every degree of
time: the light limbs executing the rapid, the heavy

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Eurhythmies and Moving Plastic 275

limbs the slow, passages. It may achieve slow effects
— unusual in music — by a flexible succession of ges-
tures, attitudes, and displacements ; and, moreover, may,
by means of dissociated movements of separate limbs,
interpret no matter what polyrhythm.

Unity in the division of time is achieved in bodily
movement in the same way as in music. As regards
division of space, we can only formulate a general
principle — the application of which must be left to the
initiative and whim of the teacher.

As we have seen, moving plastic is based on move-
ment, and not on attitude. Its alphabet will therefore
be composed of signs representing not the attitudes,
but the passages from one attitude to another. The
body in an upright stationary position may be regarded
as the axis — so far as movements of the torso and head
are concerned — of an imaginary sphere, which we divide
by nine radii. Each of the radii (that is, the distance
between the centre, and no matter what point on the
circumference) may be subdivided into x notches. The
sphere itself may be divided into eight horizontal s^-
ments (planes).

Each of these divisions is r^arded as a resting-place,
marking the boundaries of movements; but, in practice,
these marks serve to represent the distance between
the starting-point and no matter which of the resting-
places. We also have occasion to utilise these nine
guiding-points as lines of movement: thus, the forearm
may be made to follow line 8, while the arm follows
line 3, etc., and the torso, head, and arms can be man-
oeuvred differently in each of the eight horizontal
planes. When we add that we have devised eight ways

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276 Rhythm, Music, and Education

of utilising the joints of the arms, it will be appreciated
that the number of combinations is incalculable.

The space to be covered by the legs may also be
divided into eight planes, and the space within range
of the thigh into nine radii.

For the body in motion, we employ five steps of
different lengths, and thus create a great nimiber of
combinations of movements and new attitudes: each
step forwards, backwards, or sideways, modifying the
position of the body in relation to an arm fixed in a
point of space. To make oiu^ves quite clear, imagine
the arm outstretched in a horizontal line, the forefinger
pressed against the wall. To make a step backwards
involves a forward attitude for the arm; to kneel down
makes an oblique line, etc. The point fixed in space
is not necessarily concrete, and in all our exercises in
manoeuvres in space, the body evolves about an invisible
and imagined point.

Division of Space in Relation to
Division of Time

A gesture executed in x time necessitates a given
muscular force. This muscular force is the product of
the relations between the action of the synergic and
the inhibitory muscles; thus, if a gesture executed in a
certain space of time is to cover the same distance in
a shorter space of time, the activity of the inhibitory
muscles is reduced, while that of the synergic muscles
increases, and vice versa (whether the movement be
made vigorously or gently, the proportions remain the
same) . Thus, once one has decided to assume a definite

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Eurhythmies and Moving Plastic 277

attitude without stiflFness, it becomes necessary to ob-
tain from the muscles in question a sort of compromise
between these two conflicting activities, and to exercise
control over their relations, in such a way as to express
the gradations of time and weight by appropriate
movements.

Most novices are apt to make their gestures or steps
either too late or too soon. The former — ^which is the
most frequent case — arises from a surplus of activity
in the inhibitory muscles ; the latter from an inadequacy
of that activity.

Division of Time and Space in Relation to the
Situation of the Individual in Space

(i) If we now consider not one moving body,
but several bodies in motion at the same time, we are
obliged to take note of the relations of these bodies
between themselves. The student must adapt his
movements to those- of his comrades, mindful ever of
the general effect. Movements are thus both perfected
and simplified. The nuances of energy of each body in
isolation have no influence on the general nuances
effected by the group as a whole. By this means, a
group of men can produce an impression of crescendo
by an extension (the men spreading themselves out)
or by a shrinkage (the men pressing together analo-
gously to a muscle contracting). And vice versa.

(2) To the same category belongs the study of the
estimating of space to be covered: the space in which
the body operates serves as a frame, to the dimensions
of which the movements have to adapt themselves.

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^78 Rhythm, Music, and Education

Exercises in estimating space will depend on the tempo,
and on the rhythmic genre of the movements.

(3) It is of , equal importance to set students exercises
in composition (developments and successions of geo-
metrical figures), to accustom their minds to conceive
ensemble effects in a given space, and teach them to
apply them for decorative purposes.

Progressive Succession of Gestures

The reciprocal relations between the elements consti-
tuting moving plastic, form the phrasing of movement.

In music, phrasing is a collocation of elements de-
pendent on one another, constituting a more or less
complete entity. In moving plastic, we may say that
"every set of gestures in logical succession constitutes
a phrase." In other words: if one gesture results from
another, the two form a phrase.

Take, for example, the movements effected by a
wood-chopper. In order that his two gestures — ^the
raising and dropping of the arms — should form a single
phrase, the first must be the preparation for the second,
the second the inevitable result of the first. Any in-
terruption, however slight and imperceptible, will suf-
fice to produce two phrases — except, of course, where
the interruption does not imply a real break, but takes
place while the body is, so to speak, in suspension.
(We shall return to this case later.) The moment
the movement is interrupted, a fresh effort of the will
is required for its resumption, which effort of will,
being primarily independent of the preceding move-
ments, may be exercised at any moment, regardless

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Eurhythmies and Moving Plastic 279

of the latter. It is not, therefore, the result of that
movement.

We term anacrusic any action that discloses its prepa-
ration in such a way as to give this visible prepara-
tion the appearance of the act itself. The inevitable
result of this preparation is subservient to the laws of
gravity. As examples, we may mention the movements
of the wood-chopper or blacksmith, and the actions of
pulling and pushing, etc.

We term crusic any action the preparation of which
is concealed in such a way that the result of this prepa-
ration appears as the real beginning of the action. The
spontaneous movement that constitutes the action
itself inevitably produces an involtmtarily and less
emphatic movement — ^the reaction; for example, the
actions of rowing, reaping, planing, turning a lathe,
drawing a bow, throwing a stone, etc. It goes without
saying that the majority of actions may be at once
cnisic and anacnisic: that is to say, that the reaction
from one movement may be the preparation for its
successor.

Suggestion of Gestures from the i£sTHETic
Point of View

The Plastic Value of the Gesture. — ^There is another
element that should be mentioned with crusic and ana-
crusic actions, and that is the "starting-point" of the
corporal phrase.

Voltmtary actions should be localised — ^that is to say,
the willing of a movement to be effected should be
concentrated first in one or other different parts of the

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28o Rh5^hm, Music, and Education

body or limb to be moved, so as first to distribute the
effort and eliminate every useless muscular action from
the movement, and then to adjust the effort.

In the movements of manual labour, this locaUsation
is usually tmconsdous. Thus, with the wood-chopper
raising his axe: if it is heavy, the starting-point of the
movement will be in the back, which, in making the
first effort, enables the arms to lift the axe more easily
than if the effort had been confined to the hands; if
the axe be light, the hand holding the implement makes
the first effort and inevitably brings the rest of the arm
into play. It is this localisation that gives the move-
ment its plastic value. This principle is at the root of
all aesthetic concatenation of movements. But once a
movement is realised as part of a succession, the local-
isation is not essential and its adoption becomes more
complex. For instance, take again the gesture of raising
the arm: the gesture may be effected so as to give the
impression that the act of volition determining it has
its starting-point either in the breathing, the arm, or
the forearm, or the hand, and that the parts of the
body where the spontaneity of the first movement is
not evident have been brought into play by the locaUsed
preparatory action.

If the movement to be effected is of no emotional or
intellectual significance, generally speaking, it links in
action heavy with light limbs.

The trunk being the heaviest limb of the body, and
that first influenced by emotion, owing to the action of
the diaphragm, it follows that the most important and
common instigator of all movements is the breathing.

Breathing is at the basis of every manifestation of

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Eurhythmies and Moving Plastic 281

life, and pla3rs as well aesthetically as physiologically, a
r61e of the very highest importance in moving plastic.
(Vide, in my book on Eurhythmies,' the chapter de-
voted to the different methods of breathing; see also
the little voltime on my method, entitled Breathing and
Muscular Innervation,* with anatomical diagrams).
It may be said in general that, even in cases where
breathing does not engender the movement, the
phrase will begin with an expiration and end with an
inspiration.

Movements may, however, have their starting-points
in other parts of the body. The torso, arms, legs,
hips, hands, shoulders, may alike give the impulse to the
movement. And ot^ce the attitude is asstmied with its
starting-point in one or other of the limbs, breathing
will assume the function of modifying the intensity of
the arrested gesture.

Plastic and Musical Value of Gesture

Every time our conscious will selects a starting-point
for a movement, a new phrase is begun. We have
already pointed out that the characteristic of a phrase
is its collocation of elements dependent on one an-
other and culminating in a rest. But these elements
may be linked in succession in a manner more or less
constant. Precisely as a literary phrase may be com-
posed of different sentences, separated by commas or

* Eurhythmies, P^ut I. "Rhythmic Movement." Loodoa: Novdb
& Co., 160 Wardour St., W.

' La RespiraUon et PinnervaUan Musculaire. Lausanne: Jobin et Cie.
London: NoveUo & Co,

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282 Rh5^hm, Music, and Education

other ptinctuation marks, so plastic phrases may also
comprise sentences independent of each other, sepa-
rated by pauses. These pauses cannot be confused
with the ends of phrases, since the body remains in a
state of suspended animation: it is made apparent
that its movement is to be continued, but the moment
of continuation is not definitely indicated.

These points of suspension — plastic punctuation
marks — correspond to accentuations in music, and
stress the culminating points of musical phrasing.
These culminating points — "rhythmic" points, as
Mathis Lussy calls them' — ^are the climaxes of crescendo
and diminuendo, the ascending or descending lines of
which are more or less sudden or slow, complex or sim-
plified. They depend, not only on dynamics, but also
on the harmonic succession of sounds. Corporal phras-
ing at these moments becomes absolutely of the same
nature as musical phrasing, and, while achieving ex-
pression by its own technical processes, models itself
on, and identifies itself with, the latter. We may find,
especially in classical composers, a host of examples
of musical passages lending themselves to corporal
phrasing.

All the above indications relate to the corporal move-
ments of a single individual. There remains to analyse
the opposition of attitudes and gestures of two or more
bodies in movement, two or more groups of individuals,
a soloist and a group, etc. A host of combinations
suggest themselves; and these, in their reunions and

^Le Rhythme musical, Heugd, ^teur, au M6n^strel, a bia. rua
Vivienne, Paris.

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Eurhythmies and Moving Plastic 283

sequences, form what one may call the "orchestra-
tion" of human movement. The dynamic principles
are quite different from those of a single muscular
apparatus, and the guiding in space of an ensemble of
plastic artists modifies the direction of the gestures of
each isolated artist. A new polyrhythm is produced,
compound of movements and lines, and the expression
of which, even more so than the polyrhythm of a single
body in motion, brings home to us the fact that moving
plastic and music are two arts of the same nature,
capable of heightening each other's effect, even if not
created for that piupose. In endeavotuing to express
with the body the emotion evoked by music, we feel
this emotion penetrate our organism, and become more
personal and vital as it sets in vibration the deepest
fibres of our being. The student, by gradually training
his body in the dynamic and rhythmic laws of music, be-
comes more musical generally, and eventually capable
of interpreting sincerely and spontaneously the inten-
tions of the great composers, on no matter what instru-
ment he may choose. The marching, running, and
dancing to fugues of Bach will not constitute a l^e-
majesU against that profound genius who composed ex-
pressly for the harpsichord; this corporal interpretation
does not profess to render the complete thought of the
master and to substitute an arbitrary mode of inter-
pretation for the means of expression selected by him:
it is merely a matter of the substitution, for the purely
intellectual analysis of the work, of the experience of
sensations of the whole organism. To bring out the
different parts, dissociate the polyrhythms, realise the
stretti, and oppose the nuances of dynamic contrasts

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284 Rhythm, Music, and Education

will become for the student a perfectly natural pnicess.
All the structtiral details of the phrasing and shading
will be made clear, because felt by the body — and so
become organic. In short, the student will have the
music within him, and his instrumental interpretation
will become more convincing, spontaneous, vivid, and
individual.

Again, the rhythmic and dynamic faculties of the
body will expand as they take their starting-point in
music — the only possible field of development. In
fact, music is the only art, directly founded on dynamics
and rhythm, which is capable of giving style to corporal
movements, while permeating them with the emotion
which has inspired it and which it in turn inspires.
Once the body has become musicalised and saturated
in rhythms and their nuances, moving plastic will
gradually evolve into a higher and self-sufficient art.

It should also furnish the public with the opporttmity
of expressing its aesthetic will and its instinctive love
of beauty in evolutions and combinations of gesttwes,
steps, and attitudes, forming veritable festivals —
musical and rhythmic. How fine is the sight of a
host of men or children executing the same gymnastic
movement in time! But how much finer the effect
of a crowd, divided into distinct groups, of which each
takes an independent part in the polyrhythm of the
whole! Art thrives on contrasts, and it is these con-
trasts that form what we call the values of art. In a
plastic display, the aesthetic emotion is produced by the
opposition of lines and the contrasts of time; and it is
a powerful and really human emotion, because directly

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Eurhythmies and Moving Plastic 285

inspired by the mechanism of our individual life, of
which we may retrace the image in the rh3rthmic evo-
lutions of a whole populace.

Rhythm, as we have said, is the basis of all art; it is
also the basis of human society. Corporal and spiritual
"economics" are a matter of co-operation. And once
society is properly trained, from school upwards, it
will itself feel the need for expressing its jojrs and sor-
rows in manifestations of collective art, like those of
the Greeks of the best period. We shall then be offered
well-organised festivals, which will express the popular
aesthetic will, and where divers groups will perform in
the manner of individuals in a form at once metrical
and individual — that is to say, rhythmical, for rhythm
is "individuality given style.*' There are such won-
ders to be created in the domain of collective rhythmic
movement. So few people realise that this domain is
almost unexplored, and that a whole people may be
made to execute movements in order and symmetry
without presenting the aspect of a battalion of soldiers;
that it may counterpoint the musical design in a hund-
red different ways by gestures, steps, and attitudes,
while conveying an impression of consistent unity and
order. A generation of children trained in rhythm
would prepare for itself and for us undreamt of aesthetic
joys.' There is no greater happiness than in moving

"I may be pardoned for mentiomng, as a matter of record, my
F$iUmU vaudois of 1903, in which, at Lausanne, under the direction of
Gamier, a chorus of 1800 persons took part, according to my principles
(kmg before the productions of Reinhardt); also the Pestspike ci my
school at Hellerau where, for the first time, in 191 1, I achieved, in
Orpheus, and other works, a polyrhythm of crowds on staircases and
inclines. Later, the performanoes of the FHe de Juin in 1914, at

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286 Rhj^m, Music, and Education

rhythmically and giving body and soul to the music
that guides and inspires us; and it is virtually created
by the possibility of conveying to others what our own
education has given us. What can be more gratifying
than to interpret freely, and in an individual manner,
the feelings that actuate us, and which form the whole
essence of our personality — of ertemalising, without
constraint, our sorrows and joys, our aspirations and
desifes — of allying eurhythmically oiu" means of expres-
sion with those of others — to group, magnify, and give
style to the emotions inspired by music and poetry?
And this gratification is not of a passing, artificial, or
abnormal order: it is an int^[ral factor in the condi-
tions of existence and the progress of the individual.
It cannot but contribute to the raising of the instincts
of the race, and the permeation of the altruistic quali-
ties necessary for the establishment of a healthy social
order.

Geneva, where, apart from the dramatic scenes produced by Gamier,
the lyric parts of my work (text by Albert Malche and Daniel Baud-
Bovy) were interpreted by 200 rhythmic students, entrusted with the
plastic expression of the orchestral and choral 8ynq>hony on a flat
surface, tiers, and monumental staircases.

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CHAPTER XIII

MUSIC AND THE DANCER (1918)

The Philistine and the dance — Ignorance of the public —
The muscular sense — Dancing and imitation of clear-cut plas-
tic attitudes'— Qualities of emotion and style — Nuances of
force and flexibility, and their relations with those of time —
Opposition of gesture — Rests — The construction of a dance —
Space and direction — Conventional techniques — Dancing and
musical thought — Intellectual music and ** living** music —
Choreographic literature — Creation of a new musico-plastic
style — The composers of to-morrow.

a87

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Group Exercises

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CHAPTER XIII ^->^

MUSIC AND THE DANCER (1918)

Choreographic performances have been for some years
past on the increase in every country, and the public
appears to be "taking" more and more to them. We
regard this as a healthy sign of the times.

In the old days, the provincial Philistine would have
believed himself lost if his presence at a local perform-
ance of dancing had been discovered. Possibly he is
beginning to wonder to-day if dancing may not be — or
be capable of being — as pure and expressive as any
other art? Doubtless snobbishness plays its part in
this new interest; but the cult of sport is also partly
responsible. A training in gymnastics for hygienic
purposes may have awakened his interest in a^thetic
gymnastics. Unfortunately, this latter requires more
encotu*agement than is accorded it in contemporary
sport and society circles to enable it to contribute to
the progress of plastic art.

It has been said that in matters of choreography
light comes from the North. We, for our part, have
always found the ballet audiences at Moscow and
Petrograd content with a mere octdar amusement, and
it was certainly not their influence that inspired certain
talented Russian dancers to seek new outlets for their
art. In fact, they constitute the most frivolous, incon-
ao 289

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290 Rhythm, Music, and Education

sistent, and reactionary of any public, and the very
last to regard the dance as other than a superficial en-
tertainment. In other cotmtries — in Sweden, France,
Switzerland, Germany, and England — the public has
far better judgment: discerns in dancing, a higher me-
dium of expression, and is only perplexed at not being
able to explain the satisfaction it derives fix)m its va-
rious forms. One has only to mingle with the audi-
ence in the intervals, or at the close, of a performance
to appreciate their embarrassment at not knowing
whether they have enjoyed or disliked the dancing,
whether or not to yield to their first impression. The
reviews in the Press the following morning set them at
ease, and form the basis of their ultimate judgment.
They have no suspicion that the critics — whatever their
erudition and artistic taste in other branches — ^know as
little as themselves in matters of dancing. Journalists,
completely out of touch with the art of movement,
regard themselves as authorised in matters choreo-
graphic! As to those who specialise in drama and the
ballet, they are so perverted by their familiarity with
the old routine that they prove even less competent
than the others to distinguish the sincere endeavours of
genuine artists to restore natural dancing, from the pre-
tensions of the swarm of opportunists on the make. '

t It is significant that musical critics, who have received no ocular
training whatever, consider themselves fully qualified to judge musico-
plastic performances designed to appeal simultaneously to eye and ear;
while on the other hand, non-musical plastic experts do not hesitate
to lay down the law on artistic manifestations, in which music plays a
preponderant r51e. It is obvious that the criticism of performances
involving a fusion of the arts of music and bodily movement should be
entrusted only to individuals qualified to appreciate and analyse each of
the separate constituents of this artistic combination.

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Music and the Dsmcer 291

It is hardly possible to appreciate any art without a
certain understanding of the phases of its evolution
and the laws of its technique. How is one to produce
any sort of constructive criticism on the decadent
dancing in vogue to-day, or to appreciate new reforms,
unless one feels the need for these reforms, and attempts
to ascertain and analyse the source of that feeling —
and, before aU else, to establish the nature and ptirpose
of the art that for the last fifteen years has been steadily
deteriorating?

In analysing painting and music, our eyes and ears —
however badly trained — provide us with the points of
comparison necessary for any serious attempt at an
objective appreciation. But fully to appreciate the
style of human movement, we require a special — ^the
muscular — sense, complemented by what scientists have
called the Idnaesthetic or stereognostic sense (or simply
sense of space), and what Professor L. Bard, of Geneva,
has recently and aptly described as sense "of gyration."
Neither conventicmal gymnastics, sport, nor lessons in
deportment and grace suffice for this ptirpose, the
movements they produce having no direct relation with
the multiple nuances of agogics (variations in time) and
of dynamics. On the other hand, our instinctive ap-
preciation of human attitudes, lines, and gestures is
warped by a conventional education restrictive of all
spontaneous corporal expression, to say nothing of a
long addiction to stock theatrical fare.

Numerous dancer-artists have trained themselves to
assume attitudes borrowed from Greek statuary, and
have sought to revitalise them, in reconstructing plastic
masterpieces diallenging comparison with the original.

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292 Rhythm, Music, and Education

But we must remember that the isolated figures of
classical sculptors were each and all directly inspired
by the highly complex art of Orchesis; an art which,
according to Ludan and Plato, consisted in "expressing
every emotion by means of gesture." The fixing and
elaborating of the supreme climaxes of dancing and ges-
ticulation is fatal to the continuity of movement, and
destroys the logical succession of attitudes. ' It is there-
fore not enough for the modem dancer to reproduce cer-
tain decorative classical attitudes — which, in the Greek
orchesis, would merely indicate pause — ^in order to re-
suscitate and rhythmidse the life that animated classi-
cal dancing. Nor will a public, that has been soundly
educated in movement, be satisfied with the choreo-
graphic performances of the present day which consist
of a series of charming plastic themes and graceful
attitudes inconsistently and artificially linked in suc-
cession. It will demand, apart from the quintessential
emotion, ^ the qualities of style, form, and development
of contrasts and gradations required for manifestations
of any complete and vital art.

Every really musical spectator should be able to
judge whether a virtuoso has adequately analysed the
work he is professing to interpret to convey its "mes-
sage," and general emotion — or whether he has merely
studied the different passages, one after the other,
without attempting to animate the whole with a con-
sistent impulse of organic life.

« See p. 267, et seq.

'A curious phenomenon: many artists, who demand qoafitieB of
refined emotion and feeling from music and painting, express themselves
as satisfied with interpretations of dancing from which emotion— vol-
untarily or involuntarily— has been entirely excluded.

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Music and the Dancer 293

The spectator of a plastic interpretation shotild also
demand from the dancer general qualities of form and
of gradation in development, and not be content with
the successions of isolated effects, and "moments/*
without cohesion, to which too often dancers of the new
school confine themselves; and choreographic compo-
sition should be as carefully formed as musical or pic-
torial composition. Its life and emotion should be
given style, and this style will depend as much on the
position, value, and proportion, as on the intensity of
its expressive elements. In a conception of moving
plastic, the executant requires not only all the resources
of corporal technique, but in addition a training in
their careful and conscious application, in the subordi-
nation of particular to general effects, the combination
and contrasting of the latter, and the modification or
even elimination of particular elements, in accordance
with absolute principles, the observance of which
(whether spontaneous or deliberate) produces style.

The significance of an arm gesture depends on the
contrasting or parallel attitudes of the head, the other
arm, legs, and torso, the divers motions of breathing,
variations in balance produced by the displacement of
the weight of the body — and the time occupied in their
deployment. To an untrained spectator, none of these
nuances will be noticeable. ' His only concern is that
the arm should be rounded and graceftd. Just as an
auditor whose hearing faculties are undeveloped must
fail to appreciate melodic and harmonic successions, and
the divergences of sotmd relations, so the spectator who
lacks an adequate visual training, can follow only the
> See Chapter XII, pp. 279-281.

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^4 Rhythm, Music, and Education

general outline of a gesture, and is incapable of distin-
guishing its relations in space, and sensing the greater
or lesser muscular intensity. I recall, after a display
by Isadora Dtmcan at the Ch4telet Theatre, hearing
people, of artistic repute, confine their remarks to the
physical proportions, and, in particular, the bare feet
of the dancer — which is equivalent to an audience at a
pianoforte recital confining its attention to the qualities
of the instnunent, and ignoring those of the interpreter.

Confronted with the delicate shading of gesture ef-
fected by dancers like Sakkaroff , the untrained spec-
tator wiU exclaim : * ' It's the same thing over and over
again," without perceiving that in fact these artists
are performing before him the whole scale of variations
of a single gesture. And he will applaud, in other
dancers, a gesticulation over-ekborated and lacking in
rests, which is the conmion failing of many quite sensi-
tive and enthusiastic beginners. . . . And this raises
the question of the importance in plastic interpretations
of the elimination of useless movements, the installation
of rests, the distribution of expressive effects over local-
ised parts of the organism, cotmterpoint, phrasing, poly-
rhythm of associated and harmonisation of synergic
^lovements. . . .

Another factor in plastic unity and order to which
too little attention is devoted is the tmderstanding of
the relations between movements and displacements of
the body and the space in which they are executed.
A certain popular dancer, in particular, whom we re-
member as giving us the impression of a bird fluttering
frantically about its narrow cage, in search of an outlet,
was doubtless unaware of the fact that the dance of

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Music and the Dancer 295

a soloist requires to be composed with the same care
for lines and direction as the evolutions of a company,
whether of soldiers or dancers. According to the "con-
struction" of a dance, the eye of the spectator records
an impression of order or disorder, harmony or decora-
tive anarchy. The evolutions cannot be consigned to
the impulse or inspiration of the moment, any more
than, in musical counterpoint, tJie lines of polyrhythm
may, without danger, be submitted to a course of modu-
lations and rhythms traced at haphazard. It is im-
portant, in music, that the repetition of a theme — in a
rondo, for example — should be confined to a particular
key; the particular quaUty of the refrain lies in the
manner in which the composer has prepared its reap-
pearance in the initial key. Similarly, in the pldstic
interpretation of a rondo, it is essential that the attitude
and movements interpreting the musical theme into
corporal language should be concentrated, at the mo-
ment of the repetition, in a fixed portion of space. The
space of whidh a dancer avails himself shotdd be a
matter of careftd consideration, and his position delib-
erately and not arbitrarily related to the construction
and proportions of the work to be interpreted. Every
concatenation of movements and displacements of bal-
ance or evolutions results inevitably in a "resolution"
(to use the musical term), a climax, in the centre or in
one of the comers of the space, whether on a flat surface,
or on an incline or graduated plane. An attitude trans-
ferred from one point of space to another must either
gain or lose in expressive force. According to its direc-
tion, and the distance from its "base," it may entirely
change its significance^ The prearranged disposition of

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296 Rhythm, Music, and Education

lines constitutes a factor in the retrospective apprecia-
tion of a dance (by visual memory), of which few
dancers appear to suspect the importance.

But so far we have confined ourselves to the essen-
tially plastic side of the problem. Indeed, it is this
aspect which makes the most direct appeal to both
public and critics, and apparently the only appeal to
dancers. The musical atrocities perpetrated by certain
illustrious nonentities in the art should, to our mind,
arouse the indignation of all lovers of music. There
are times when protest becomes a matter of duty.
And yet the majority of so-called connoisseurs object
at most to the external side of the interpretations. We
submit that a dancer has no right to be ignorant of
and to despise the music which he chooses as a pretext
for his evolutions. There is an intimate coimection
between sound and gesture, and the dance that is
based on music should draw its inspiration at least as
much, and even more, from its subjective emotions as
from its external rhythmic forms.

A gulf separates the movements of the Greek orchesis
from those of our modem ballet. And yet it is indis-
putable that the majority of the latter were originally
fotmded on the purest classical traditions: only the
spirit that animated the dances of the ancients is ex-
tinct ; life has left them. There remain only a few fun-
damental attitudes and positions, but how restrained
and systematised! The divers motions of the arms,
for example — ^the innumerable symmetrical and as3mi-
metrical positions that provided all the resources of
gesticulation — ^have been replaced by a soUtary circular
movement, devoid of all expressive or mimetic value,

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Music and the Dancer 297

partaking exclusively of the nature of gymnastics.
The same applies to the positions of the l^gs, head, and
torso. On the other hand, a special technique has been
devised to develop the action of leaping (to the detri-
ment of expressive walking), and has replaced the
pursuit of natural balance by means of slow or quick
corporal displacements by abrupt tensions on tiptoe.
Dancing has become a form of acrobatics, and the arms
are employed merely to maintain balance. This has
produced a species of physical deformity that prevents
the dancer, habituated from his youth to the processes
of the traditional ballet, from cultivating an easy and
natural slow gait, the divers brachial djmamisms, and,
generally, the most simple expressive expedients of the
dance ''k la Duncan." One cannot serve both God
and Mammon.

One must, however, admit that some of the ballet
effects in question possess a certain grace and pictur-
esqueness that may give rise, on occasion, to considerable
pleasure. But it is a pleasure confined to the eyes, and
cannot attain any really emotional or musical value.

And yet music is the basis of the most conventional
dance, and we have a right to demand from dancers that
elements of musical phrasing, shading, time, and dy-
namics should be observed by them as scrupulously as
practicable. To dance in time is not everything. The es-
sential is to penetrate the musical thought to its depths,
while following the melodic lines and the rhythmic
pattern, not necessarily "to the letter" — ^which would
be pedantic — ^but in such a way that the visual sen-
sations of the spectator may not be out of harmony
with those of his auditive apparatus. Mtisic should

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298 Rhythm, Music, and Education

be to dancers not a mere invitation to the play of cor-
poral movements, but a constant and profuse source of
thought and inspiration (musical, and not literary, in-
spiration— ^for the stagey effects of external imitation
and the transmutation of natural musical impulses into
sentimental little stories should be confined to Panto-
mime). Music should reveal to the dancer inner and
higher forces that any intellectual analysis or ptu*suit
of the picturesque can only weaken. It wiU serve his
purpose only so long as he does not exploit it in the
interests of an exclusively ratiocinative expression.

But it must not be inferred that, to revive musico-
plastic art, it will suffice to give our dancers a sound
musical training. They must in addition be made to
understand the intimate connection between musical
and bodily movement, between the developments of a
theme, and the successive sequences and transforma-
tions of attitudes, between sound intensity and muscu-
lar dynamics, between rests and pauses, counterpoint
and countergesture, melodic phrasing and breathing —
in short, between space and time.

This understanding cannot be improvised, but ne-
cessitates a general training. We do not commend it to
dancers who aim no higher than at the amusement of
the eye or the exercise of their muscles — ^nor to those
whose vocation consists in executing popular and na-
tional dances, the Court dances of past ages, or the
capricious evolutions of the modem ballroom and caf6.
But it is essential to every dancer who ventiu-es to
transpose works of absolute music into corporal move-
ment. There may exist, in the theatre, an art of * 'deco-
rative plastic" confined to embellishing the outlines of

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Music and the Dancer 299

mtisical architecture, but there also exists an expressive
plastic, the r61e of which consists in extracting from
music its ideal aspirations and whole emotional life.
This shotild not be undertaken unless accompanied by
a profound respect for music as an inspiring force, and
for the human organism as its potential interpreter.

We must bear in mind that plastic is never neces-
sary to "absolute" music, which works in the deeps
of the spirit, and the emotions of which frequently
suffer by being brought to the surface. Music is cer-
tainly the most potent agent that exists for revealing
to man all the passions that surge in the obscure pro-
fundities of his subconscious self. Its vibrations suffice
to awaken and distribute his feelings; its tonal and
rhythmic combinations constitute a special language
complete without the addition of any other agent of
expression. Every phrase directly issued from an essen-
tially musical soul is self-sufficient, and any attempt at
strengthening the expression by means of mediums of
another order can only prejudice its clarity and power.
Why should we desire to improve on it, when it is
complete in itself? Similarly, any direct revelation of
inner feeling by means of moving plastic can only
assist the sound expression, where it is a spontaneous
emanation, and manifests itself in a naturally emotive,
eloquent, and dii^tinct form. In so doing it qualifies as
music itself, since the art of music is only, in R. Pas-
manik's definition, the "revelation of the quintessence
of the imiverse."

But, just as music may be allied to the word in the
form of music drama or ballad, so it may be combined
with plastic to express elementary emotion in a mixed

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300 Rhythm, Music, and Education

language. In the one case as in the other, music must
be kept within bounds, and obliged to diminish its
expressive power to enable the element with which it is
associated to assert itself, not with redundancy but in
collaboration. Combination implies assimilation; only
such poems as are designed by their authors for a
musical complement should be set to music, and only
music that has been intended by the composer to be
completed by human movement, or which is modelled
on the primitive forms of the dance, should be expressed
plastically. Thus in a great number of the instrumental
pieces of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the
rhythm is of a manifestly corporal origin. The same
rhythms permeate the choral music of the seventeenth
century. The majority of the chorales of Albert, Schein,
Hassler, Kreiger, etc., are really dance music. Many of
the French, EngUsh, and Italian works of the same
epoch are of a similar character. The later Corantes,
Passepieds, Allemandes, and Sarabandes of J. S. Bach
were written in the form of dances, just as a number
of his fugues (Nos. 2 in C minor, 11 in F, 15 in G, etc.,
of the "48" Book I, for example) were constructed on
popular dance motifs.

All the inventions and fugues designed for amuse-
ment, without regard for any intimate emotion, and
the sole aim of which is to depict a sort of chase, may
be interpreted by human groups in lines, fleeing from
each other. The rhythmic impression produced by the
rich polyphony must, in my own, as well as in the
opinion of such fervid Bach enthusiasts as Ad. Prosniz,
Fritz Steinbach, R. Buchmayer, Ch. Bordes, etc., be
thereby considerably enhanced. Nevertheless their

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Music and the Dancer 301

counterpoint is often of such a strictly digital character,
that a corporal interi>retation can only be achieved at
the cost of a fatal decrease in pace. That is why it
shotild be essayed — as with the abstract thematic de-
velopments of the succeeding period (Haydn, Mozart) —
only in an analytic and pedagogic spirit. The same
risk attaches to orchestral transcriptions, for dancing
purposes, of modem and romanticist pianoforte pieces.
We recall with a feeling of discomfort the cumbersome
effect of Schumann's Carnival interpreted by the
Russian Ballet in the style of pantomime. Dancers
would do well to insist on contemporary composers writ-
ing special music for them. But the latter must bear in
mind that the collaboration of gesture, while it offers
them novel and interesting possibilities, imposes cer-
tain special restrictions on their freedom of expression.
We shall require the composition of a music intention-
ally non-rhythmic to allow for completion by rhythm
of a corporal character. On the other hand, the har-
monious attitudes of dancers exclusively occupied
in interpreting the superficial aspect of certain soul-
states might be accompanied by musical rh3rthms to
strengthen the vital impression of their ideal represen-
tation. The dance could also be made to serve to
express the Dionysian side of artistic expression, while
music conveys the Apollonian side or, conversely,
sounds could reproduce the frenzy of elemental passions
in sensorial language, while the dance embodied their
decorative forms in space. In one, as in the other case,
we should achieve a spiritualisation of matter, a pure
expression of soul, an idealisation of form, and an emo-
tionalisation of sensation.

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302 Rhythm, Music, and Education

It is always dangerous to attempt to adapt subjective
music, of an essentially human character, to the physi-
cal resources of temperament. The intimate essence of
a work is never wholly revealed to us when an instru-
mentalist— or conductor — endeavours to adapt it to his
individual manner of expression. In making the work
his own, he robs it of its tmiversal emotional character.
He is not interpreting, but rather transforming, re-
creating, it. The inevitable coarsening of a thought
cannot fail to jar on those who were familiar with it
in its original form. In a musico-plastic combination,
no one of the agents of expression should seek to fuse
completely with another: each should endeavour to
bring out the other. To obtain this result, it is neces-
sary not only that the dancer should be completely
initiated into musical science, but that the composer
should utilise every one of the expressive potentialities
of the human organism.

A musician would not venture to compose a violin
concerto without a knowledge of the resources of that
instrument. How then can he dare project a score for
that complex instrument, the human body, without
familiarising himself with its capacities for interpreta-
tion? If he understood these, he would not limit him-
self to recording musical rhythms, and leaving the
maUre de ballet to procure their imitation by his troupe,
he would produce a score wherein the miming, gestures,
movements, and attitudes of the dancers would be as
scrupulously entered as are those of the string, wind,
and percussion instruments in a symphony.

Instead of always developing the sound and plastic
movements along parallel lines, eflEects of contrast might

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Music and the Dancer 303

be achieved in the metre and rhythm as well as in the
melody and harmony. For instance, music arranged in
simple time (binary pulse) might be set oflf , as in orien-
tal music, by plastic motifs in compound time (ternary
pulse). To the rhjrthmic accentuations of each tonal
phrase would be offered corporal accentuations em-
phasising other fragments of the same phrase. Musical
melody might be applied to a harmony of plastic move-
ments executed by several individuals acting in concert,
or in groups, or — ^by way of variation — a succession of
corporal movements of a monorhythmic character
might be accompanied by harmonies of sound. One
might devise a whole harmonic system of gestures
arranged in chords and having their inevitable resolu-
tions like combinations of sound.

Effects of concord and discord, of contrast and fusion,
created by the combination of orchestral sjrmphony and
corporal polyrhythm, might be enriched by various
combinations involved in moving plastic — ^which de-
mands, before all else, the co-operation of groups of
individuals. A dancer would require to be a genius of
a very high order to dance solo to divers musical works
throughout a whole recital without producing an effect
of monotony.

Too many solo dancers are content to narrate cor-
porally a series of little stories, without attempting to
vary the medium of expression. Varieties of facial play
do not stiflBce to produce varieties of movements of
the whole body. There is not a single musical instru-
ment— ^with the exception of the polyphonic piano —
that could be played, to the exclusion of every other,
for two consecutive hours, without wearjong an audi-

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304 Music, Rhythm, and Education

ence. And the same applies to the solo dancer. While,
on the other hand, the union of a number of dancers
permits of as much variety of effects as the play of
several instruments. The associations of timbres pre-
sent combinations analogous to those produced by
human masses differently grouped.

There remains for us to indicate under what condi-
tions there might be created — ^as a contrast to absolute
music — SL special music adapted to gesture, and which,
while distinct from the music of pantomime, would,
like it, be deprived of all technical development, con-
structed on simple and regular lines, and would leave —
at considerable sacrifice — ^a large scope for the collabo-
ration of human movements. Its function would con-
sist in inspiring and animating the body — ^the source of
its own inspiration and animation — ^in acting both as
its master and its servant, identifying itself with it,
while preserving its own individuality.

A difficult and complex task, no doubt, but one that
will certainly be accomplished, once the dancer has
become a musician, and can persuade the composer to
spare him the effects of merely decorative music, and
devote his gifts along the lines of a more human and
vital art. A new style wiU have to be created, product
of the collaboration of two equally expressive arts,
with the potential participation of a whole public
trained to co-operate with the artist, and to assume a
responsible part in his performances. The time is
ripe — as Adolphe Appia has told us — ^to assert the dig-
nity of our dramatic instincts, the tritunphal gateway
giving access to all the other arts. . . . This "living
fiction" alone can confer on us a status in the art realm,

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,-'&»*

Geneva Festival. 1914

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Music and the Dancer 305

and can initiate us into the mysteries of style. This
transfiguring art — the art that by its rhythm unites
our whole organism to the quintessential expression of
the soul — ^would seem to be on the wane; but it is
only a cloud that obscures it. . . . Music is always
with us. Let us open ourselves to it; we have relin-
quished to it the ardent expression of our inner life,
let us yield to its new demands, deliver up to it, without
reserve, the whole rhythm of our bodies, to be transfig-
ured and emerge in the aesthetic world of light and
shade, forms and colours, controlled and animated by
its creative breath.

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CHAPTER XIV

RHYTHM, TIME, AND TEMPERAMENT (1919)

Balance of physical and emotional faculties — Rhythm and
its characteristics; continuity and repetition — Time an in-
tellectual principle — Necessity for counterbalancing regularity
of movements by contrasting spontaneous impulses. Danger
of stereotyping instinctive motor faculties — Rhythm and Intui-
tion— Motor habits and character — Manifestation of divers
temperaments — Table of qualities and defects of a rhythmic
nature, in untrained children — Association and dissociation
of motor and auditive faculties — Natural aptitude for rhythm
and music in children of different European countries.

307

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CHAPTER XIV JaCQUBS CHBNBVltEB

RHYTHM, TIME, AND TEMPERAMENT (19I9)

Music is the direct reflection of emotional, as of mate-
rial, life, and musical rhythm is only the transposition
into sound of movements and d}aiamisms spontane-
ously and involuntarily expressing emotion. Conse-
quently evolution in the art of Music must depend on
the progress of the individual, by means of a careful
training in the balancing of his physical and moral,
instinctive and ratiocinative, forces. As a matter of
fact, very few people suspect that, if every form of ar-
tistic progress depends on a general mental advance, a
reform of musical education can be achieved only
through a reform of general education. The latter in
our present-day schools lays stress on mere instruction,
concerns itself exclusively with intellectual develop-
ment, and ignores the cultivation of temperament.

A balance of the fundamental faculties of the indi-
vidual can never be attained unless, from an early age,
the organism is habituated to the free play of its forces,
an unhampered circulation of the divers currents of its
thought and motor powers, and a regular alternation —
controlled alike by sub-conscious instincts and conscious
will-power — of physical and spiritual rhythms, of which
the ensemble constitutes temperament. The man of

309

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310 Music, Rhythm, and Education

science should be capable at a moment's notice of trans-
lating himself into a man of action. Indeed, the ideal
education, and that especially to be desired, now that
the war is over, is one which will enable our children to
subordinate their practical to their mental habits, and
to convert their intellectual rhythms, as occasion de-
mands, into physical actions of the same order. The
"intellectual " should no longer be differentiated from
the man of physical capacities. There should be a me-
dium of free exchange and intimate union between the
respective organs of corporal movement and of thought.
No longer should our divers functions be isolated by
voluntary specialisation. A harmonisation of our nerv-
ous system, the stimulation of slack motor centres,
control of instinctive behaviour and spiritualisation of
corporal manifestations, should establish a unity in our
organism both for preparatory and executory purposes.
And the training involved is neither forced nor labori-
ous— on the contrary ! Our freedom as men of thought
and action depends on this unity of the rhythms of
thought and life. A time will come when our bodies
attain — through a complete reconquest of the muscular
sense — an independence bringing our acts into direct
imion with our desires. Therein lies the ctire for neu-
rasthenia, and the recipe for the constitution of the
"whole man," whose vital expression, at once sponta-
neous and complete, shall have the double character of
a materialisation of the ideal, and an idealisation of
physical potentialities. The two poles of our being will
be intimately coimected by a single rhythm: the ex-
pression of our individuality. And, thereupon, art will
lose its metaphjrsical character, and constitute a spon-

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Rhythm, Time, and Temperament 311

taneous manifestation of our inner being, directly re-
presenting the rhythms of its life.

The characteristics of rhythm are continuity and
repetition. Every motor manifestation, isolated in
time, presents an exceptional and momentary emotional
aspect, which is lost the moment it is repeated to form
part of a continuous whole evolving at once in time and
space. The two fundamental elements of rhythm,
space, and time, are inseparable. In certain of the arts
one or other of these elements may be predominant;
in music, and in the supreme art — ^life, they are dis-
soluble and of equal importance. Life, in effect, is
itself a rhythm, that is, a continuous succession of
multiple units, forming an indivisible whole. Indi-
viduality may also be regarded as a rhythm, for the
combination of its faculties, many of them conflicting,
constitute an entity. But every life and every work
of art that conforms only to the idiosyncrades of the
individual is a-rhjrthmic, for the rhythm of art and of
life demand the fusion of all traits of character and
temperament.

Metre, an intellectual expedient, regulates mechani-
cally the succession and order of vital elements and
their combinations, while rhythm assures the integrity
of the essential principles of life. Metre involves ratio-
cination,CAythm depends on intuition^ The metrical
regulation of the continuous movements constituting
a rhythm should not be permitted to compromise the
nature and quality of those movements.

The musical education, following the lines of the
general education provided in our schools, is inspired by
the desire to regulate sounds and harmonies, establish-

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3" Music, Rhythm, and Education

ing the theories of the science, and reducing it to a
system, all of them activities of a material order. Cer-
tainly the regularity and precision of movements are
stu-e evidence of healthy volition, but educationists are
mistaken in regarding the will as the sole meditun of
control, and begetter of a complete, individual, and well-
proportioned work of art. The creation of a movement
of synthetic life is a matter of temperament ; pedagogues
are oblivious of the fact that a special training will
develop the spontaneity of vital rhythmic manifesta-
tions, and by placing the student in a position to feel
clearly every instinctive movement, and providing him
with the means of subduing all the forces inhibitory of
the expansion of his motor habits, will enable him also
to breathe in a new emotional atmosphere, and free
his emotions to attain a maximtun intensity. Instead
of directing musical studies towards rhythm, we h'mit
their scope to the metrical plane. The encotu-agement,
by assiduous cultivation, of the eflBorescence of motor
impulses is neglected in favour of a concentration on
the creation of measured volitions. The same applies
to dancing, which, in our best-known academies is con-
fined to the acquirement of a corporal technique; the
training aims at the conquest of measiu*e, and is confined
to the regulation of arbitrary successions of gestures and
movements, instead of inspiring, by the development
of temperament, the expansion of natural corporal
rhythms. Music and dancing alike are at the present
day taught along mechanical lines.

A machine, however perfectly regulated, is devoid of
rhythm being controlled by time. To regulate the move-
ments effected by a manual labourer in the exercise of

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Rhythm, Time, and Temperament 313

his calling, is by no means to assure the rhythm of his
activity. The handwriting of a copyist conveys the
impression of mechanical and impersonal regularity.
That of a writer, giving rein to his inspiration, records,
on the other hand, the rhythm of his temperament.
Versification is only the metrical side of poesy. The
rhythmics of poesy depends on the underljdng thought,
impulse, and non-reasoning qualities. Nattu-al dancing
may be duly measured, without revealing the impulsive
spirit, the physical and moral phantasy — that is, the
rhjrthm — of the dancer. The submission of our breath-
ing to discipline and regularity of time would lead to
the suppression of every instinctive emotion and the
disorganisation of vital rhjrthm.

The voluntary exercise of the recurrence of the beat
assures regularity — and there are times when this regu-
larity is indispensable. But to confine oneself to this
form of activity would be to risk depriving one's char-
acter of all spontaneous vital expression. Time fur-
nishes man with an instrument, which, in many cases,
ends by making him its servant, influencing the dy-
namic and agogic elements in his movements, and re-
pressing his individuality in favour of a conventional
mechanism. The metrical regulation of bodily move-
ments— one of the main featiu*es of most systems of
gymnastics — ^has been made possible by the discovery
that many organisms have lost their elementary char-
acter and natural impulses, and require to be remoulded
through the will. But in every healthy body, the need
for movement is associated with other needs of a super-
metrical order (as Lieut. Hebert well understood), and
the resultant expression arises from the nervous con-

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314 Music, Rhythm, and Education

stitution of the organism. K we consider the art of
movement on the stage, we must recognize that as soon
as the artist — ^be he dancer or comedian — attempts
the arbitrary and artificial regtdation of his gestures,
and is content to conform to the laws of measure and
decorative effect, his play loses all rhythmic spontane-
ity. Metrical regulation must be subservient to rhyth-
mic impulses.

The same applies to music, where the metric tradi-
tion kills every spontaneous agogic impulse, every ar-
tistic expression of emotion by means of time nuances.
The composer who is obliged to bend his inspiration
to the inflexible laws of symmetry in time-lengths
comes gradually to modify his instinctive rhythms,
with a view to unity of measure, and finishes by con-
ceiving only rhythms of a conventional time-pattern.
In the folk-song, the rhythm responds spontaneously
and natiu-ally to the emotion that has inspired it,
and is not fettered by any metrical rules. Not only do
unequal bars succe^ each other in flexible and har-
monious alternation, and the principle of irregularity of
beats is audaciously asserted, in defiance of hallowed
laws. All music inspired by folk-tunes rings rhythmic
and spontaneous, and the irresistible impulse of Russian
music, and of the modem French school, is due to their
instinctive return to the natiu*al rhythms of folk-lore.
But once this return is premeditated, the rhythms
lose their sincerity and vital qualities, for, we must never
forget, rhjrthm is a non-reasoning principle, originating
in elementary vital emotions. Only the cultivation of
primitive instincts, a "clean sweep" of otu- present
selves, by a re-training of the nervous system, can give

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Rhythm, Time, and Temperament 315

our motor organs the faculties of elasticity, resilience,
and relaxation, the free play of which will give rhythm
to the expression of otir emotional being.

This training is also the only one that can restore
the art of dancing. The present training obliges the
dancer to illustrate by concurrent steps and gestures
a music deprived of rhythm by the exclusive cultiva-
tion of metre. There again we find the mechanism
of instinctive motor qualities, and the intellectual-
isation of fundamental emotions. The imperative
impulse evoked by a feeling can express itself ade-
quately only by the aid of a spontaneous gesture.
Once the will has intervened, the current between
nerves and muscles is interrupted. Under these con-
ditions, all exercises aiming at the automatisation of
conventional successions of gestures and attitudes are
prejudicial to the development of the rhythmic facul-
ties. A renaissance of the dance can only be achieved
by the subordination of external metre to the free and
continuous expression of inner rhythms. ^Esthetics
should be bom of Ethics. In the same way, musical
rhythm can only flotirish with the support of expressive
elements issued directly from the depths of the ego and
supplanting all the formulas of metre.

Apart from that, artistic feeling can only be devel-
oped with the co-operation of music, the only art,
inherently free from ratiocination. To suppress, by
certain educative means, the nervous and intellectual
inhibitions that prevent the organism from submitting
to the control of musical rhjrthms, and to teach that
organism to vibrate in unison with sound vibrations,
will be to liberate impulses long repressed by a mechani-

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3i6 Music, Rhythm, and Education

cal training restricting the instinctive inspiration of
mankind; more, it will idealise otir physical, and re-
suscitate our spiritual, forces, and thus herald the birth
of a musical art at once more emotional and more vitaL

The rhythm of every work and of every action reacts
immediately on the nattu-e or the degree of individuality
of its author, representing always the direct expression
of the sensations and feelings of the individual. Doubt-
^less it can be imitated and stereotyped, but, in that
process, it loses its fundamental principle, being bom
of emotion, which can only be expressed by means di-
rectly inspired by intuition. The imitation of elemental
rhythms relates to the realm of purely intellectual pro-
cesses, based on deduction. As James Schelley has
aptly expressed it, in an article on Rhjrthm and Art:
"Rhythm is to intuition, emotion, and aesthetics, what
scientific order and logic are to the intellect. One of
the essential qualities — ^if not the essential quality — of
rhythm is its power of convejdng the presence of life.
Mechanical order, on the other hand, is objective and
impersonal. . . . Time passes and is scientifically
recorded by the mechanical oscillations of the pendu-
limi. And yet, for some of us time 'ambles withal,*
for others he 'trots and gallops withal,' for others, again,
he 'stands still withal."'

There is an immediate connection between the in-
stinctive movements of our body, the continuity of
which forms and asstu'es rhythm, and the processes of
otu- psychic life.

It would seem that rhythm imprints a definite char-
acter on the speculations of thought, moulding their

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Rhythm, Time, and Temperament 317

form of expression and dictating the langtiage suitable
for revealing the fundamental principles of sensorial
life and transplanting them into the realm of emotion.
It would seem, moreover, that by virtue of some secret
mechanism not yet defined by psycho-physiologists, the
mind possesses the power of choosing from among all
the motor sensations of the individual those most con-
genial for transfiguration into durable impressions and
definitely rhythmic images.

The more we succeed — thanks to our education — in
detaching our instinctive corporal movements from the
shackles forged by circumstances and environment, and
preserved by heredity, the more we shall eliminate
intellectual and nervous inhibitions, adverse to the
spontaneous motor manifestations of our organism; the
more also will our muscular play evoke precise rhythmic
images, expressive of our individuality, for the service
of the mind, and the latter will contrive to record
certain sequences in such a way as to confirm its
momentary impressions. These sequences will vary ac-
cording to the state of the mind at the moment it is
engaged in fixing these images. Intuition will indicate
those that must be eliminated to avoid compromising
the direct expression of the temperament, as "attuned"
at any given moment of our life. This attunement is
capable of considerable variation, and that is why the
rhythms of certain works of art may appeal to us differ-
ently, according to the moment when they are presented
to us, although our mechanical processes of judgment
cause us to appraise them, from the intellectual point
of view, in a consistently similar manner.

The function of temperament should be to adopt

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3i8 Music, Rhythm, and Education

spontaneously every motor manifestation capable of
expressing the particular state of our organism at any
given moment. To contrive, by means of a special
training, to enable the child to sense distinctly the
nature of its instinctive corporal rhythms, and of their
divers successions, is to render him capable of sensing
life itself in a more freely emotive spirit. Emotions
can only attain their maximum intensity when all the
faculties of the being expand in a single harmony, while
nerves and muscles expend their emotive force with
full, synergic, and precise power. How can we expect
the child's sensibility to flourish if we do not cultivate
his elementary vital manifestations from the first, and
throughout his school training? Stu^ely it is the most
bizarre of anomalies to teach him the rhythms of the
speech and thought of others before enabling him to
sense those of his own organism?

The question of education assumes a capital import-
ance in relation to post-war generations. This is
universally recognised, and England — among other
countries — ^has for two years already been seeking the
means of according more ample space in its curriculum
for experiments aiming at the imbuement of self-know-
ledge and the harmonisation of intellectual and ethical
conceptions with the most simple means of expression,
founded on a perfect understanding of their physical
potentialities. The Minister of Education himself con-
tributes to the investigation of current methods of
scholastic instruction, and takes a personal interest in
all research for means of developing the child's tempera-
ment, and factilties of free will. This example will cer-

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Rhythm, Time, and Temperament 3^9

tainly be followed sooner or later by all other countries.
It is the duty of educational authorities to see that edu-
cation does not stagnate, and to seek progress in the
direction of a new system designed, in elementary
schools as at the universities, to limit the number of
purely intellectual subjects in favour of conveying to
the minds of our future citizens what we may call their
temperamental sense.

The possession of highly developed impulses and
racial instincts should be supplemented by the power of
controlling these faculties by an intelligence instructed
in the diversity of their powers. Education must no
longer confine itself to the enlightenment of pupils in
intellectual and physical phenomena. It must conduce
to the formation of character, assuring to children the
consciousness both of their weaknesses and of their
capacities, and rectifying the former as it strengthens
the latter, while enabling them to adapt themselves to
the exigencies of the new social order. It is no longer a
question of a simple development of the scientific and
analytical mentality, but rather of an evolution of the
entire organism.

It is often in the most trivial actions that the most
intimate traits of character reveal themselves. Motor
habits betray them as distinctly as facial expression.
Motor habits can be modified by education and trans-
mit this improvement to the character. "Education
without a definite aim produces an indefinite character,"
as Legouv6 expressed it, and, conversely, one that aims
consistently at the regularisation of organic functions
under the control of a ludd, well-ordered, and resolute
mind must inevitably influence the character in the

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3^ Rhythm, Music, and Education

same direction. Character is not only the direct ex-
pression of temperament, but also the product of the
mind's discoveries, in relation to the general faculties of
the motor and nervous systems, the control and har-
monising of which form part of its functions. And, if
Taine was right in a£5rming that "the character of a
people may be regarded as the compound of all its past
sensations," it follows that the acquisition of more
numerous and stronger sensations, under the influence
of a new education, must serve to create in our mentali-
ties reactions inevitably modifying the essence of our
character.

It is diflScult to determine whether one race is en-
dowed with stronger rhythmic sense than another; but
it is obvious that the influence of climate, customs, and
historical and economic circumstances must have pro-
duced certain differences in the rh3rthmic sense of each
people, which are reproduced and perpetuated in such
a way as to imprint a peculiar character on the dynamic
and nervous manifestations at the root of every original
corporal rhythm. Certain peoples, for instance, present
marked differences in their muscular capacity (which,
according to Peron, is greater in Eur(^)eans than in
savage races) and in the nuances of their nervous mani-
festations. The structiu*e of the human body also
varies according to race, and must play an important
rdle in all forms of motor expression.

Temperament is obviously responsible for the motor
form of corporal rhythmic phenomena. Certain peoples
are more nervous than full-blooded, more lymphatic
than choleric, and it does not require a profound analy-

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Rh5^thm, Time, and Temperament 321

sis or a multitude of experiments to determine the
enormous influence of the fusion and association of
temperaments on the phenomena of reaction and corpo-
ral expression, on variations of dynamics, agogics (that
is "shading" of time), and manipulations of space, pro-
duced by different aptitudes for natural rhythmic ac-
tions. The divers degrees of susceptibiUty of the motor
organs introduce nuances into the spatial character of
gestures and their dynamic expression. Rhythmic fac-
ulties are undoubtedly less highly developed in some
countries than in others, but as these depend not
only on the musctdar and gyratory senses, but on
the general or particular state of the nervous sys-
tem, we may assume that they may easily be modi-
fied by training. The same applies to gifts of hearing
and distingui^iing of sounds which, conjointly with
rhythmic qualities, constitute the substance of musical
talent.

Rhythmic training can make a person musical, since
impressions of musical rhythms inevitably evoke some
sort of motor image in the mind, and instinctive motor
reactions in the body, of the hearen Muscular sensa-
tions eventually coalesce with auditive sensations
which, thus re-inforced, add to the faculties of ap-
preciation and analysis. The ear and the larynx are
organically related, and their functions are connected
by synergic forces dependent on the associated nerve
centres. The vibrations perceived by the ear may
be increased by the augmentation of the vibratory
power of other corporal sotu^ces of resonance ; for sounds
are perceived by other parts of the human organism

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322 Rhythm, Music, and Education

besides the ear.' By the association of his motor and
auditive organs, a child is enabled to imitate vocally the
rhythmandmdodyofasong. With those who can imitate
only the rhythm, and sing the time incorrectly — and who
are conscious of this drfect — ^it is practicable, indeed,
generally easy, to rectify the accuracy of the voice, once
r^;ular exercises have developed the inner muscular
sense.

Character and temperament are easily recognised,
not only by the speed of gestures, and the form of atti-
tudes, but also by the nuances of tone of voice, and the
rhythms of articulation. Children of a Ijnnphatic ten-
dency speak and sing quite differently from their robust
or nervous comrades; and so with their motor manifes-
tations. Travellers visiting a foreign country for the
first time obtain an impression of the general character
of the people from the accent and modulation of their
speech. Consider the difference between the muscular
lassitude, the nonchalant facility, the heavy and coarse
good nattu^ in the oral rhythms of the Vaudois, and
the monotonous recitative and hesitations of the
Genevan, and his guttural tone produced by constant
nervous resistance and muscular contractions, Again,
what crispness, abruptness, harsh and deliberate ag-
gressiveness in the Prussian speech! What imagina-
tion and conflict of rhythms in the impulsive volubility
of the Latin, what terseness and purity in the English-
man's modulation of vowels, what melancholy and lack

'I knew a peraon, deaf from birth, who never missed a mtisical
performance, and was sensitive not only to the dynamic but also to the
hannonic qualities of the music

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Rh)rthm, Time, and Temperament 323

of balance in the excessive contrasts of pitch in the case
of the Slavs!

A child devoid of rh3rthniic feeling will punctuate a
song in the same manner as that in which he moves,
while walking and gesticulating. But there are consid-
erable differences in rhythmic aptitudes, and inniuner-
able gradations also in the divers manifestations of a
music^ temperament, in respect of faculties of intona-
tion and audition.

We find, at one extreme, children completely devoid
of rhythmic and musical feeling, to whom all sotmd is
mere noise, and who, though intelligent generally, are
sheer idiots musically — their ears impervious even to
the nuances of spoken soimds (gentleness, severity,
irony, etc.).

Others are endowed with well-developed rhythmic
sense, marching and gesticulating in time and with ease,
but are unable either to distinguish or sing a tune.

Others — good rhythmidans — can at first distinguish
tunes only by their rhythms, and cannot recognise
simple successions of unrhythmic soimds. In these, once
they are submitted to a training by and in rhythm, one
may produce a longing to distinguish the soimd of tunes,
which leads in time to the attainment of this faculty.

Others, again, are bom with good ear and rhythmic
sense. . . . But this class may be subdivided into
infinite categories and sub-categories.

Good hearers, for example, may be bad readers and
singers, and vice versa.

Good hearers of isolated sounds or tunes become bad
or mediocre, when it is a question of distinguishing
chords and successions of harmonies.

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3^4 Rhythm, Music, and Education

Good hearers may be incapable of mentally co-ordi-
nating and analysing their auditive sensations.

Good hearers may be able to appreciate pianoforte
music, but not that of other instruments or the human
voice, and vice versa.

Good hearers may be subject to periods of bad hearing
(nervous depressions or over-stimulations), or, again,
may hear well only during a portion of the music lesson
(that probably where their natural instinct does not
dash with mental effort; or where, on the other hand,
fatigue disttu-bs the mental concentration necessary to
certain people to assure good hearing).

As to the divers aptitudes of a-rhythmic subjects,
they are likewise of very different natures. Some of
them exhibit:

1. Ease in conceiving or seizing musical rh3rthms, but

difficulty in expressing them.

2. Ease in expressing rhythms with certain limbs (e.g.^

the arms) and difficulty with others (for example,
in walking in time or in dancing).

3. Ease in expressing rhythms with the voice, diffi-

culty in executing them with the body, and vice
versa.

4. Ease in executing rhythms with any limb or organ

separately, but not with combinations of organs of
arms and legs, arms and voice, voice and legs, etc.

5. Ease in executing known rhythms, but difficulty in

distinguishing and memorising tmknown ones.

6. Difficulty in understanding, (fistingtushing, and

executing rhythms, but ease in continuing this
execution once they are known and assimilated,
and the limbs made flexible by exercises adapted
to the special nature of the rhythms.

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Rhythm, Time, and Temperament 325

7. DiflSculty in continuing correctly for long a rhythm

which has been commenced correctly.

8. DiflSculty in dispensing with constant mental con-

trol of the body (\^ence arises a lack of ease
and smoothness in the movements or the uncon-
scious alteration of rhythms).

9. DiflSculty in retaining the mental impression of a

rhythm without continual recourse to physical
sensations.

10. DiflSculty in accustoming limbs to certain

automatisms.

1 1 . DiflSculty in interrupting automatisms, whether ac-

quiied with ease or difficulty.

12. Ease in acquiring automatisms in certain limbs,

difficulty in combining them with automatisms in
another limb.

13. Ease in imagining and then executing rh3rthms,

difficulty in executing rhythms given by another,
and vice versa.

14. Ease in distinguishing and executing the most com-

plex rhytlum, difficulty in distinguishing the most
simple polyrhythm.

15. Ease in executing rhythms in a certain movement,

difficulty in varying their speed.

16. Ease in executing a rh3rthm without dynamic shad-

ing, difficulty in introducing in any kind of emo-
tional accentuation of nuance without modifying
the form.

17. Ease in shading a rh3rthm, but at the sacrifice of

metrical accuracy, etc.

All these difficulties arise from:

Muscular weakness — Lack of nerve tone — Muscular
stiflfaess — Muscular Hypersensitiveness — Nervous dis-
harmony— ^Lack of balance due to inadequate sense
of space — ^Excessive intrusion of critical faculties, pro-

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326 Rhythm, Music, and Education

dudng continual intellectual resistance — ^Lack of con-
centration— ^Lack of flexibility in analysing — Deficiency
of muscular memory — Deficiency of cerebral memory —
Lack of will-power — ^Excessive energy — Deficiency of
resolution — ^Excess of self-confidence — Lack of self-con-
fidence, etc.

I have had occasion to note all these defects and the
multiple combinations of their principal elements, in
children of nearly every race and type, in the course of
twenty-five years* experience not only in teaching eu-
rhjrthmics and developing auditive faculties, but also
in producing my action songs for children, designed for
accompaniment by gesture. These roundelays have
been sung in every country, and I have often been
amazed to note the extreme difficulty the little singers
have experienced in moving gracefully to the rhythms
of the music, and in cotmterpointing the simplest melo-
dies with gestures in time — ^and how resistances of
every kind impede the free play of their instinctive
rhythmic movements. It was the observation of this
too common a-rh3rthm that encouraged me to pursue
my physiological studies to the point of instituting a
new form of education. This education aims at restor-
ing to the child his complete corporal mechanism and
freeing his "natural rh3rthm" (that is, the spontaneous
motor expansion of his temperament), from the inhi-
bitions which too frequently impede its expansion. I
think I may claim, despite the rash criticisms of those
who judge my method only from its external side, to
have thus created an indispensable complement to the
education of children in every country. If the child-

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Rhythm, Time, and Temperament 327

ren of one country reveal blemishes in the motor sys-
tem not to be found in children of another country,
there are also appropriate exercises to combat all forms
of bad motor habits, and to transform them into new
and good ones; the teaching of eurhythmies should
certainly vary according to the temperament and char-
acter of the children of every country in which it is
introduced. It only remains to persuade psychologists
and educationists alike to direct their experimental
researches towards the study of rhythmic aptitudes and
motor and auditive predispositions. Meanwhile it may
be of interest to record certain observations of a general
character on the rhythmic and musical aptitudes of
children of the countries I have had most frequent
occasion to visit. I hasten to disclaim any scientific
exactitude for these impressions.

Genevan children possess in general a lessflexible vocal
apparatus than the children of German Switzerland.
Their capacity for distinguishing sounds, on the other
hand, is more developed than in the German-speaking
cantons, especially among the middle classes. Rh3rthm-
ic feeling, hopelessly deficient in the old Genevan
families, is quite normally developed among the pro-
letariat, where it is not perverted by pronounced
nervous and intellectual resistances. In German Switz-
erland, as in South Germany, metrical feeling is more
conspicuous than rhythmic feeling, and a superficially
rhjrthmic individuality is often marred by extreme mus-
cular stiffness, prohibiting the dynamic and agogic
shading necessary for the extemalisation of nattiral
rhythms. This stiffness is far less common in the Rhine

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328 Rhythm, Music, and Educatioii

provinces, and is only rarely found in Austria and
Hungary. In these two countries, movements possess
an extraordinary elasticity and variety, as among the
working population of certain Russian provinces. But
this refinement of rhythmic feeling and capacity for
shading movements is counterbalanced, in Austria by
a mental versatility often disconcerting, and in Russia,
among the inteUigenzia, by a hypersensitiveness, pro-
ducing the same inhibitions as the introspective excesses
that de-rhythmidse Genevan society. Auditive facul-
ties, highly developed in Austria, are very slight in
Russia, where, moreover, the vocal powers of children
are frequently of a deplorably low standard. I am
speaking, of course, of tihe children and adults whom I
have had occasion to teach, and whose studies and inter-
pretations have been conducted tmder my control.

In Germany, where the love and cultivation of music
is more general than anywhere else, the auditive sense
is certainly not more refined than in any other country.
Extreme mental slowness — combined in males with an
excess of self-confidence — impedes the functioning of
the agents of analysis, or, at any rate, involves a con-
siderable waste of time between sensations and deduc-
tions. This defect is compensated, especially among
women, by qualities of perseverance and assimilation,
rarely to be met with among the Slavs, whose sudden
enthusiasms, ardent aspirations, and commendable am-
bitions for intellectual, artistic, and social progress are
cotmteracted by their irresolution and constant crises
of moral depression and distrust of self.

Swedish children are remarkably well endowed with
rhythmic faculties, and possess quite natturally a feeling

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Rhythm, Time, and Temperament 3^

for bodily harmony. I have not had stifiSdent oppor-
tunity of following the development of their auditive
faculties to enable me to speak authoritatively on the
subject, but their musical feeling and vocal capacities
are certainly above the average. The primary schools
lay great stress on gymnastics, and, in recent years —
music, the stimulating influence of which was perceived
by their great educationist Ling. A movement is in
vogue in that cotmtry for the revival of folk-songs and
dances, spontaneous representations of which by school
children in the open air may be witnessed in all parts of
the cotmtry. In Norway, musical instruction in schools
also shows an upward tendency, while musical aptitudes
are approximately the same as in Sweden. The charm-
ing old town of Bergen holds a largely attended public
orchestral concert twice daily, and the children emeige
from their schools singing and dancing. The plastic
talents of these children are no less pronounced in
country districts than in the towns. One may see little
peasant children, after a few months' physical training,
moving with really marvellous grace and natural balance.

One finds the same ease of movement in Danes, but
this quality is — ^with rare exceptions — not applied to
such refined aesthetic conceptions as with Swedes. The
obsolete cult of "grace for grace's sake" is still in force
there, and the public, infatuated with ballet dancing,
appreciates hardly any but external virtuoso effects.
In purely musical gifts they appear to me to be entirely
deficient, and Denmark requires, more than any other
country, a thorough overhauling of its system of musical
training in schools.

Dutch children, are naturally good singers, less

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330 Rhythm, Music, and Education

good at hearing, and fairly rhythmic. All these facul-
ties are admirably developed, thanks to the constant
individual efforts of several distinguished education-
ists. But their aesthetic sense and taste for moving
plastic are unforttmately perverted by their poverty of
muscular elasticity, looseness of tissue, and defective
corporal build. It is to be hoped that an intensive
physical culture will lead, as in Sweden, to a develop-
ment of motor aptitudes.

The movements of English children are not restrained
by any of the inhibitions encountered so commonly
among Slav and Latin peoples. They have none of the
muscular stiffness or mental dullness of the German,
and are free from nervous and intellectual weakness,
possessing a highly flexible corporal mechanism and a
very special capacity for plastic and rhjrthmic expres-
sion. But if the development of Russian children is
impeded by their hypersensitiveness and frequent
nervous disturbances, that of the English suffers from a
contrary tendency. Their lack of nervous sensitiveness
deprives them of emotional emphasis, and their easy
and graceful movements are devoid of elasticity and
djmamic shading. Their muscular tension rarely at-
tains a degree equal to the minimtmi among the Latins.
As to their actual musical feeling, it is by no means of
so low a standard as is generally asserted on the Con-
tinent. The people undoubtedly love music, and their
hearing and vocal capacities are normal. As in Sweden,
the old folk-songs have regained a position of honour; it
is quite common to see children dancing and singing
in the streets, and their choral singing in the frequent
popular performances of old English mystery plays is

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Rhythm, Time, and Temperament 33i

remarkable for its accuracy and balance. On the other
hand, music is too commonly regarded, in social circles,
as a mere accomplishment, and its cultivation in schools
and private musical academies is largely superficial and
conventional. Once the efforts of the reconstruction
enthusiasts have succeeded in obtaining a due regard
for music and Eurhj^thmics in the school curricultun,
the English people will not be slow in attaining a stand-
ard worthy of the descendants of the great composers
who represented it so honourably in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries.

I have, imfortunately, not had the opportunity of
studying French, Italian, and Spanish children ade-
quately to express a definite opinion on their capacities.
Musical education is very Ughtly regarded in their
schools, and, on the other hand, their musical students
rarely emerge from their respective countries. I have,
however, had occasion to observe the French students of
my Eurhj^thmic Institute at Geneva; I have also at-
tended performances of my children's songs in various
important provincial schools, and been present at
Eurhjrthmics classes in Paris. . . . The feeling for
vigorous accentuation seemed to me far more developed
than in England, but there was less ease of movement,
and the stiffness of gait and gesture seemed curiously
inconsistent with the mental and imaginative flexibility
of the people. I do not attribute this coarseness to either
nervous or intellectual causes : it is more probably due
to the absurd fear of ridicule which produces, both in
the family and at school, an excessive repression of
physical manifestation of feeling, too often accompanied
by reserve due to sex feeling. It is gratifying to find

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332 Rhythm, Music, and Education

that sport has at last — ^thanks to the efforts of a few
influential persons — entered the curriculum of masculine
education, but physical culture does not yet form part
of the training of children, being reserved for adults,
while intellectual rather than physical or musical
games are cultivated at schools. Even among the peo-
ple— I speak of the Parisian people, the only ones whom
I know well — dancing aptitudes are little developed,
and public balls are patronised chiefly by professional
dancers, whose grace is often not over-marked at that.
Once let them cultivate their natural individual gifts —
as they do on the stage — ^and they will show evidence of
sufficient artistic feeling and imagination to furnish high
hopes for the development of rhj^thmic bodily move-
ments among the people, so soon as steps are taken
in that direction. Incidentally, French children love
movement, and I have noticed in several classes of
suburban elementary schools with what deligkt the
children took to Etirhythmics, and, on the other hand,
with what amazement school inspectors regarded their
great joy.

From the auditive and vocal points of view, the same
obstacles impede the normal development of natural
aptitudes. The Frenchman, as a musician, reveals
artistic qualities of the first order, a highly flexible
sensitiveness, an innate sense of proportion and balance,
and a delicate feeling for nuances. But efforts should
be made in this cotmtry to liberate music from its
monopoly by the aristocracy, and to introduce it, by
a greater care for the inner life of the child, to the
homes of the people — ^where, at present, it appears
to be in tmcongenial surrotmdings. One never hears

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Rhythm, Time, and Temperament 333

French children spontaneously singing national folk-
songs, on school excursions, nor is part-singing cul-
tivated by students in their social gatherings. And
yet there is no dearth of choral works available for
execution.

It will be seen from these summary observations that
rhythmic and musical instincts vary according to the
natural dispositions of races.

They are not the same in Russia as in England, in
France as in Sweden, in French as in German Switzer-
land, even in Lausanne as in Geneva.

In certain countries, dynamic feeling and the sense
of intensity of nervous reactions require to be developed,
and more frequent and spontaneous motor manifesta-
tions provoked; in others, on the contrary, quite other
results should be sought, nervous manifestations requir-
ing to be tempered, and the dynamic play of muscles
softened. In one country, vocal training, in another the
development of hearing f actdties, will require special at-
tention. In every country, Jewish children should be
specially urged to undergo a training in Etirhythmics, for,
while their musical faculties and artistic intelligence are
in general of a remarkably high order, their a-rhythm
and lack of harmony in motor and nervous ftmctions
are liable to hamper their aesthetic development and
their attainment of intellectual and physical balance.

These remarks, however disjointed, are based on a
whole series of positive experiments, rarely before
attempted by psycho-physiologists. Every people is
capable of evolving to its advantage or disadvjantage
according to the care with which its children are reared

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334 Rhythm, Music, and Education

from infancy. Whatever the curriculum or scholastic
methods in vogue, it is essential for the progress of
every race, that education should aim primarily at the
formation of character, and the cultivation of tempera-
ment, and should comprise — ^with regard to music —
the development of auditive and vocal faculties, and
the harmonisation of motor habits.

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MUSICAL SUPPLEMENT.

Example w\.

a) Lengthening a note by half its value.

o**= o J J

J. . J J Dot after a note.

J.. . ^^^ Two dots after a note,

J-« J J J^'^ TA/w rfo/j after a note.

b) Lengthening a note by one quarter of its value.

o: = o^

o:. - ^ijt^

J : = J^ JA^ second dot under the first.

«/:• = J «h«^ ^ fito/ after the two itots, one above the other.

J«t : J^^ l\iOo dots one above the other after the first dot

c) Lengthening a note by one eighth of its value,

o:=o«n |J:=elJ^^ Three dots one above the other, etc..

"ih^ ui.Jr-^-h

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uj NoUtlon Of the cote^alue of H\ of a Semlbrwe # Q/Motttloii of tbe notcHvalae Of Vs <>f * SemlbnTe # '

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Digitized by VjOOQ IC

* Example N9«

Theme.

1) LEKGTHEKIM6 OF A BEAT. (jPatifie written out; Agof ic accent.)

2) ADDITION OF A REST. OEtitenuto, Hesitation, A|:ogic reaiataace.)

3) REPETITION OF A M:aT OR A RHTTlUillC ELEMENT.

(E). -® ^. 0 .®

4) ADDITION OF AN APPOeoiATURA. Eztenaion or Ezpreaaive amplification of
a melodic and rhytiimic element.

i£L ®.. ^. .® ®

5)ADDJNG OR LENGTHENING BY AN ANACRUSIS OR A METACROUSE. ENLARGEMENT
OF A MELODIC LINE.

g).,.® ®,

j^lTBNpiNGJ)R SH0)I11B^1NG A RHTTHMIC ELEMENT BY TWICE .

TWICE AS FiST.'aicce/iW^
a)DouBLiNe rak lbk6th of a beat.

^1 -iniJiiVijirr III rjnj^jij^jji I ,

b) DOUBLING THE LENGTH OF A.BAR .

c) Halting the length of a beat.

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COMBINUieTHB DIFFERENT PR<

£SQa)ICATBD IN PRBCEDIKe PA6E.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

e) DIFFERENT BAR-TIMES. (Twice as fast or frlow.)

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H-^

JV J.

ir*==> — r r

y=4:

=4=^

-f — '

^ '

'1 ' 1 "

D^Unkqual

Example n? 5.

ANALYSIS AND COMBINATION OP TIME ELEMENTS CONSTITUTING A RHTTHM.

TAeme. U J J# I is compoted of three elements. IJ I J lUTill
DIFFERENT COMBINATIONS OF THESE ELEMENTS.

TJ J J rj J J I'J3J 'J^fJ «D;3 cl I'J^J^J IV? J J l«ie.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Wttk anacruses. ^

EXAMPLSMoe.

AcTiTiTT AKD Rest. — contrast and Balakcb.

^ ^ i^tAm severai times repeated, followed by a rest the value of the whole
rhythn* ., , .

nX J^yni I J^-m J. I J^-TTIJ. |_. I

Contrasts obtainkd by shorter rests. (Rest the value of one beat)

Contrast obiaixed by a differekt rhythm less lUTOKrASi.Ca/znAtojoin
tworhythms.) , -t ^ ^ i

B) Jn unfinished rhythm fvUtnoed by an incomplete bar.

\ ifi M » I I II 1

Contrast bt repeatin« a rhythmic element.

0 Rhythm toitk anacrusis. Contrast b^ the omission of the anacrusis^

6)1 1 mArSi\ JOTIJT^\ jrj:\sz}\'i\i^'\

D) Contrast obtained by different tone quantity, (dynamic ahading.)

7)1 jr3J)j J j)lr^j)j J Mri^} J j)!

or
or

ni^ J -h

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

E) Conirust obtained by a change of harmony or melody.

etc.

V)Co9Urast obtained &y variation of tempo (a&ogic ehadi

^)vomrasiooiatnea^vmwtton of tempo Ugogic ehadiM)
G) Contrast obtained by different articulalion. rmmtnndo

H) Contest b^ change of bar-Ume. *^'^"'

I) Contfust by diminution of a rhythm (twice as fast.)
b) 6y augmetaation of a rhythmic element (twice as slow.)

IJ /I J I

C) by diminution (three times as fast).

II ^^^to . , , s s s

a4lj. ;)j I J. 1} I J. ;)j |jnnrt^jrT3i

J^ Rbf thmic squareness of classical composers not necessary for phiase babuKv
Kiiythmic contrast is sufficient.

Z bars i | 8 bars i»

-4 bars •

-ibar-

-Ibar-

15)1 J J

. I -4 bare . | ibar 1 i

I J J -fraixUfW J. IJ J JOT JJ Ji -W31 J.I

ie)IJ3lJr733|J7^|J7^|j'J3lj!n3]?;3lJS3fj J3l
l"jS3(jT33|J73al-nn3|J'''j3|J773l;733lJ7^lj'|

K) Ckminut obtained by the alternation of another r^thm.

17)1 J /sjjjjiU -n-hj J)l-n5jr3j:i/ijr3i

L) Two rhythms alternating and followed by an arrest.
Bhythm A.| J J~3 J J I

BhyUan bJ/IJI/I J1|

DlPFERBirT COMBIKATIOA'S.

1) AABlSrra6t}BBA-ABAB-BBABA-
t) ABB • BABA -A - B -BAA AB

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Example m9 7.

SUBOITISIOK OF LOSQ NOTE-YALIIES IKTO DIFFERENT fiROCPINOS.

t>®(|)«^®(|)

h ^

2j ^eeombinatiat of a be^of 8 J^ and a beat of Z S^in a bar of

Example.

Unequal beats may be formed oo the same principle in any kind of bai; e^^
8) A BAR OF & .

^Regular Visions. X^fipPpiff^^^TT^

kalbeut9).

Irregular divisions (\
Id In 4miequalbeat8

C) In 8imeqiial beats.

d) In 2ime<pialbeat8.

f) BhytAfns.

h) The same rhythm

i) The same rhythm in S unequal beatsg
4) A BAR OF -J-

a) BegMlar divisions 4(i)

b) Irregtiar divisions (unequal beats)
C) In 4 unequal beats.

Digitized by VjOOQIC

e; In two tmequal beats.
f ) Rhf/tkms,

h) In three unequal beats.

5) A BAR OF li! .

7 a)

A)Jl^ulardnJ«on.^^^^^M f If ^ jT^ fP fP jf

B) Irfegular dix ision.

e)
Rhythms:

6) A BAR OF 11 .
P a)
A) Regular division\

hreffular divisums rjinegual beatsU

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

8) CONTRASTS OF DIFFERENT SUBDIVISIONS OF LONG NOTE-VALUES IN |5IMUL.
TAXEOUS MELODIES. ^\

A) Regular
divisions.

imjmrcicfcircjTcifcif

J J J jj ,rrm J J J J J

B) Irregular
divisions.

UliTtJinn $ imnm.

EXAMFlEmS.
1) Melody in A with unequal beats

Digitized by VjOOQIC

i) MBLODT WITH UNEQUAL BARS.

♦Coda

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

4) SYNCOPATIONS OQ^QUAL NOTE-VAtUES

Digitized by VjOOQIC

^* Example n9 9.

CHAXOLNG the T£11P0 by TRaNSF£RIUX6 THBBEATTOADIFF£RENrNDTB\U.nfi.

- Jb b

I J"7?5JJJJJJ JTf51 I JTnn I /TT3 JH II
H JTnJWT JTTn I JTrt/7IHT3nil

II J7J5JJJJJJ rjOT I JTT9 r3 1 jm r3 u

11/731/33373/737]! /T73n 1/373/1 «
I /735J7H33 /TTO I /m/li n37 n I

i. J o/tkeprtcedin^ duplet.

i«?iiLcnto

^^^ qfth^jprkfeeddngqutnteiet*
A — ^_ ..^ _i ^ .^

^XAMPLSN910. Rests
. , a) ^ rest on a strong beat is stronger than one on a weak beat. , ..

''fjjjjijjj^^rj^j^iji3jijjjjuitiiji^jjji o It

ll?/^ijij/jlJJ^JJHJJJitJ J \} J-IJ. II
lir/f2lJJiJJIJJ> J JJU JJ Ji J I o. II

b) Theimportanceofaresteorrespondstotheroleplajfedbjfthesoundicku^
it replaces inthe musical phrase. A rest which lasts for a tcholebariswore
f^itftportantthaf\a restwhwh lasts for onebeat only.

♦Notice the •^'''inthid last reit.

c) Crescendif dindnuenii, accelenindiandritardandiooBiinueduriiigrests^
acceler . .. an , do , . rite , nu » to

4) A rest replacing a rhythm arMcfpated(draiDaiic effect).

=^Jf

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

e) The length of a rest can vary. (Extending and contracting metrical

± 2 4 A « 4 oeHn

periods^

f). Rests grradually revlacinjBrthe anacrusis ofa rhythin^^^^__^^^^^

g) Sudden exhaustion.

/: -/JVP

n) ffradual exhaustion.

iJjT-n-hj i^U^j^j^j i>ii)^j^j^j i)lj)7r- I
h-'n^)^ j)i>Ji;j J)ij)7jij)j j)ij),MVHJ)7j^etc

fj)7,r3J)J i)U7JlJ)J iil-blJl-hJ J^Ul7'7Hi^yietc

(The interpretation of the return of a theme after a silence varies accord,
.ing to the character of the preceding rhythm.)

}) Force or accent can persist during a period of silence.

p^ j^j)j j)l j)7 ji;g ;)! j), Jij^j '^i^-'/j^/ 1 J)^ Jl etc.

k) Fatigue can persist after a period of silence.

/ J'P'PPPPPP PT

1) Oradually increasing during the silence up to the return of a theme.

> -PP r jy

m) Relaxing during silence.

^J>7J3;)J J)|J)7J1J)J J)|i)7jlJ^J J^j.j)n ^ ^ U^ n etc.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Example. SONATA Op.lO.N9». (Rondo.)

AUegxo. Rhythmic iwing MnrupM

Birrao^rKv.

WM it ^m^ ^^^^^^t. M

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